Bad Faith and Public Discourse

Does our current model of public discourse reward bad faith argumentation? Yes, it completely does. It does so because the commercial and entertainment values of anything goes up for bad faith arguments. Getting your opponent or the audience "riled up" helps to promote anything. I remember watching the Fab 5 documentary and while the documentary was about the glory of five freshman starting for college basketball and making a back-to-back appearance in the title game. However, the commercials promoting the documentary showcased how these black men were treated because of their race.

The bad faith argument comes in when Jalen Rose, the point guard for Michigan, stated that the Duke Blue Devils only recruited "Uncle Toms" for their program. This argument alone spawned media attention and even became the catalyst for Duke's own documentary covering those same years. This showed their opponent to be for a certain kind of black people (racist), when the fact was that they were a better team and proved it in the second half of the 92 title game. The documentary was phenomenal, but it could've done without the attack on another college. This became the focal point of many people's discussion about the movie instead of how amazing a feat it was to be underclassmen starting at the collegiate level.