Author Michael Dobson compared it to the idiom the pot calling the kettle black, and called the phrase a "famous example" of "tu quoque" reasoning. The conservative magazine "National Review" called it "a bitter Soviet-era punch line", and added "there were a million Cold War variations on the joke". The Israeli newspaper "Haaretz" described use of the idiom as a form of Soviet propaganda. The British liberal political website "Open Democracy" called the phrase "a prime example of whataboutism". In her work "Security Threats and Public Perception", Elizaveta Gaufman described the fallacy as a tool to reverse someone's argument against them.