BLATANTLY OVERSTATING YOUR CASE IS NOT EFFECTIVE ADVOCACY

Why do advocates feel compelled to blatantly overstate their case?  It may fool the uninformed, but it undermines the advocates’ credibility with people whose opinions matter (such as, in the situation I’m going to reference in a second, the county supervisors and the judge presiding over their lawsuit).  Some examples from a muckraking article that appeared at AZCentral.com on February 28:
The “gravity of pollution from [the egg farms is comparable to the water contamination in] Flint, Michigan, where dangerous levels were found in the drinking water?”  The pollution from the egg farms is ammonia in the air.  That’s really as harmful as lead in the drinking water?
Egg farms “are now factories – they are manufacturing plants, there’s no bones about it.”  An agricultural operation pollutes to the same degree as a manufacturing plant?  Never mind that there’s no comparison between an agricultural operation and any manufacturing facility using chemicals.  Let’s just talk about smell.  Have you ever lived near a paper mill?
And finally, no, Tonopah and Arlington are not “on the western edge of metro Phoenix.”  They are closer to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, west of Buckeye, than they are to Buckeye, a historically (and currently) agricultural community that could be considered on the western edge of metro Phoenix.
Now, none of those overstatements are from the residents who are complaining about the egg farms in western Arizona.  They are from advocates.  But as an advocate, I’m here to tell you that overstating your case to that degree is not effective advocacy.  
The situation with the egg farms doesn’t sound like it implicates the hoary, and confusing, legal concept know as “coming to the nuisance.”  I’ll have to discuss that some other time.