Evidence of Evidence?

So I was reading David Brooks' review of Andrew Sullivan's most recent book in the NYT today. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/books/review/Brooks.t.html?ref=books

And I come across this:
I have a rule, which has never failed me, that when a writer uses quotations from Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and the Left Behind series to capture the religious and political currents in modern America, then I know I can put that piece of writing down because the author either doesn’t know what he is talking about or is arguing in bad faith.

And then a bit further on there's this:
The people who are most destructively closed-minded in America are people like Donald Rumsfeld, Ann Coulter and Howard Dean, and they are not exactly religious nuts.

Now, there are any number of observations I could make here. I could, for example point out that there's only one political operative named here. Or that no one has actually explained why, precisely, Mr. Dean is "closed-minded." Perhaps its because he's a Democrat who thinks Democrats should win. In that case, I suppose it would be difficult to decide who on the Republican side should be chosen since, apparently, they all think just that same way. Or, if we are talking real (as in fatal) destructive closed-mindedness, why the President wasn't put on this list. But what fascinated me was the use of the same rhetorical maneuver of selective naming employed by the person who levelled the initial criticism of selective naming.

Admittedly, we could stop here, with a simple Bravo! But let's press on, shall we?
If, in light of the observations made about this particular listing, we apply the writer's own "rule," we can see that he is either (a) ill-informed or (b) "arguing in bad faith." Label (a), definitionally, cannot apply here, since the writer has made a living creating a pseudo-typology of American psychologies. So that leaves us with (b). I for one am encouraged to see a commentator so forthrightly display his blade. Reminds me of a charming post at Redstate, wherein the "values" folks attempted to extol the virtues of hypocrisy.