A straw man is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic.
Recently, a Kossack wrote an impassioned plea for our President to not expand this war, including the line "Be your mother's son." The way I read that, it could have been said to anyone, as a plea to be human. To be humble. To remember one's roots, and to respect the life-giving power of mothers (as opposed to the potentially life-taking powers of people in positions like the president's).
So why did the following become the recommended meaning at Daily Kos:
bringing the president's mom into the mix - when she can't have a say about it - is just disgusting.
And while i won't do what you did and presume to know what a dead woman would think, i'll take a leap and say that Dr. Soetoro probably would be relatively proud of her son.
The straw man here is a presumed disrespect for Obama's mom, and a projection of what she would think.
More Kossack-recommended meanings:
I know you think you know everything - And you're not alone, this place is full of people who would fix 8 years worth of disaster in one day, but sadly they don't feel like running for president - But the truth is that you don't know s***.
I understand that emotions can run high, and need to spill over, but it's embarrassing when this is the recommended discourse at Daily Kos. In a diary in which blackwaterdog tries to portray Moore as childish, "You think you know everything" is a pretty weak argument, especially when followed by "the truth is that you don't know s***."
Michael Moore is a real person. A Kossack. An activist. I cannot stress enough that almost all of you are ON THE SAME SIDE as Michael Moore on many issues, just as you are on the same side as Obama on many issues. That Moore has intelligence, i.e. "knows s***" should be seen as a given, and that he respects the president and his mother should be ridiculously obvious based on the body of work that Moore has presented to the world (including an early endorsement of Obama in April '08). In fact, like it or not, Moore probably has as good a history of being "sensitive" to people's feelings as anyone in the public eye. Yes, he films people crying, but he cries with them as well, and in this letter, he is crying with many of us here at dKos.
To act like a mere mention of Obama's mother is somehow a smear, and worse, one of those how-dare-you type mentions of a mother - that's some serious straw man low-brow stuff, the kind of shame-mongering that is typically within the realm of the people that we fight against.