Every argument is ad hominem nowadays. It is the sickness of the post-modern era[1]. Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. Charles Bukowski kicked a woman. Paula Dean once used a racial slur referring to a man that robbed her at gunpoint. Leonidas probably opposed women in the military.

Let's throw out all of human history and art and listen to the pious, sniveling PC morons of the last 10 years. That is the modern world for ya.

[1] http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/regiftedxmas12.html

> Every argument is ad hominem nowadays.

Careful... http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

In fairness, the form

  Thomas Jefferson said that [some well reasoned argument or opinion]

  Yeah, but Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. 
  [and thus we shouldn't consider his argument]

is pretty clearly ad hominem.

Yeah Friday. It's Bagel day!

But this crap still bothers me. It drags an otherwise nice discussion about good art into the gutter of reactionary judgements. A lot of really good artists had/have problems, but that doesn't discount their work.