The Hardy defense is an argumentative tactic, analogous to the "Chewbacca Defense" (made famous by the late Johnie Cochran, in a South Park episode). The Chewbacca Defense itself, is a satirical term for any legal strategy that seeks to overwhelm its audience with nonsensical arguments and thus confuse them into failing to take account of the opposing arguments and, ultimately, to reject them.

It is thus, a kind of logical fallacy, specifically a red herring fallacy, and non sequitur similar to argumentum ad nauseam. The Hardy defense not only supercedes the Chewbacca defense in every regard, it is also not limited to the legal arena. Any argument, from the most profound, to the most mundane, will fall prey to the Hardy Defense.

The origin of the Hardy defense is the cesspool that is #efnet.org where I had made a comment about what is probably the most notable real-life ugly duckling story. I had made what I thought was a fairly innocent comment of, "Kurt Nilsen is cool." Little did I know, that I was about to face the most awe-inspiring and dramatic chownage known to any IRCer.

(For those that are unfamiliar with Kurt Nilsen, he was the most unlikely winner of the Norweigan idol competition, and even MORE unlikely winner of the World Idol title. He was voted as such almost unanimously at that. To say the least, it is by far one of the best underdog stories I've ever witnessed personally.)

I was then posed with a question by Hardy, "Why is he cool?" Before I ...