Just One: Number 8

A dear friend and colleague recently posted a MySpace bulletin that included the following question:

8. Thoughts on the presidential campaign?

This is my attempt at answering it.

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Make no mistake: this election is of monumental importance. Still, I fully appreciate the fact that the executive branch is much larger than the president, and the election is much larger than its primary players.

For my money, I think this election provides an important opportunity for the citizens of this nation to stand up for civility and mutual respect in civic discourse and to become thoughtful practitioners of temperance; to steadfastly engage one another with grace and without malice; and to learn to not only negotiate but embrace ideological difference in order to learn from one another, to act with beneficence, to protect and preserve that which is worthy of such care, and to progress.

When people I value, respect, and just-plain-like make unfounded, disparaging, dismissive, unsupported, vicious comments that attack either ‘side’ through ad hominem and dogmatic arguments, I am greatly saddened. I am saddened by the anger and venom that accompanies almost all of our contemporary public discourse. I am saddened by the far right claiming proprietary rights over faith, and I am sickened by the far left claiming proprietary rights over intelligence. These strategies are unfair, unprincipled, and inaccurate and, to my mind, do not reflect, to borrow an iconic phrase, the state of our union. These practices—not any act of congress nor executive order nor economic crisis—will be our nation’s undoing.

In this election cycle, especially, I pledge to remind myself to think, act, speak, disagree, and compose not without passion but with patience, consideration, and openness. Does anyone care to join me in the attempt?

Shameless Plug

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am having my Intermediate Composition students keep team blogs to allow them the opportunity to write for a 'public audience.' This is the first time I've incorporated blogs into my pedagogy, and I am learning a lot. For starters, while ostensibly written for a public audience outside of the teacher/learner dynamic, the blogs have been, for the most part, written for me, the instructor. This may owe to the quality of the prompts I've offered, which have been predominately academic and have emerged from classroom lectures/discussions centered on rhetorical theory. So we'll see where the next unit takes us. Still, I am encouraged by the investment these students have shown in engaging the project.

With all this in mind, I would like to invite anyone who reads my musings here to visit our class blogs. I have established a 'hub' where I post class notes, prompts, et al. materials appropriate for an open-access forum, but more importantly, the 'hub' allows access to the student blogs via the blogroll. I hope you will consider checking us out, and please feel free to engage these blogs as you would any other; after all, the course is called

Engaging the Polis:
Rhetoric and Forms of Public Argument

Care to join us?

Belated gratitude

To Bradley for nominating my little ol’ blog for a 2008 “Brilliante Weblog” award.

(though after raising his dander with my most recent post, perhaps he has reconsidered?)

Anyway, it is shameful that it has taken me so long to post this and convey my sincere thanks . . . not just for the kudos but for his continued readership and thoughtful contributions.

Bradley, right back at’cha. And thanks.

I plan to pass the award along soon, so stay tuned.

'What Makes People Vote Republican?'

I found the following, excerpted from Jonathan Haidt's most recent piece for Edge, intriguing:

Our national motto is e pluribus unum ("from many, one"). Whenever Democrats support policies that weaken the integrity and identity of the collective (such as multiculturalism, bilingualism, and immigration), they show that they care more about pluribus than unum.

Of course, there is much more to his piece than this singular observation; his treatment of political ideology and moral psychology is particularly cogent. Agree with his conclusions and treatment of the problem or no, he offers valuable insight that is, at the very least, worthy of consideration.

To my mind, Haidt's work compliments Richard Weaver's observation in Ethics of Rhetoric (1962) that in discursive practice conservatives tend to argue from definition and liberals tend to argue from circumstance, providing yet another locus for understanding the dynamic between language, thought, and action.

If you are at all interested in rhetoric, politics, and ideology, you should check it out.

My Scholarship

I just 'wordled' some of my work, related to my dissertation, and this is what I came up with:

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Image courtesy of wordle.net

Yup, that pretty much covers it. Cool.

Retiring Retirement

No, not me. That is to say, though it may seem that I have retired from blogging for a spell, I haven’t really: I have just been a tad too busy with other writing and projects. So my absence was not a retirement, per se; therefore, I have no retirement to retire. But I digress . . .

No, the retirement(s)—or more appropriately, the coming-out-of-retirement(s)—to which I refer belong to none other than two incomparable sports legends: Brett Favre and, made official just today, LANCE ARMSTRONG.

[applause. crowd cheers.]

Yes, it is official: Armstrong will ride the ’09 Tour de France with Johan Bruyneel and team Astana. I can’t deny that I am very much excited about this news. When I first heard the rumors a couple of days ago, I had mixed emotions: why must these legends call it good only to return? Knowing that, at least among athletes, one’s return performance rarely matches the hope and hype left in the wake of one’s former glory and victorious departure, why tamper with a legacy? But that’s the story, right? The brilliant narrative. Retirement: the dénouement. That isn’t, as Russian Realism shows us, the experience of living.

So we see our larger-than-life characters dressed in the fictions we create for them, then are somewhat shocked when they do not recede into memory, submit to being placed on the shelf, their stories complete.

A while ago, during all the Favre hullabaloo, I wrote that I thought Favre should just apologize to everyone for all the fuss and stay retired. I still feel that way. Yet, I am excited for Armstrong’s return. Why the discrepancy? Both are immensely talented. Both have captured the hearts and imagination of a broad population. Both have remarkable, compelling stories to share. Both are amazing competitors and just plain enjoyable to watch.

I reckon that it is just the manner of coming out of retirement: Favre put the team, and by extension his fans, in a really difficult position. The Packers organization entertained Favre’s vacillation about retirement for much longer than a few weeks this spring; speculation and indecision about his retirement accompanied the end of every season for the last four years. When Favre finally decided to retire, he said it was on his own terms. No one wanted to see him go, but if he was going to go, at least he was going to go a Packer. If the reports are true, then the organization even hung with him through the period of indecision that followed his announcement last March. But at some point the team had to move forward. Once they made that commitment to Rogers, following Favre’s insistence that he would not come back, they were bound to honor it. A sports writer, whose name escapes me at the moment, once wrote that GB fans may never get over their collective crush on Favre; all the drama surrounding Favre’s six-month retirement certainly assuages the pain. I always admired Favre because he seemed to put the team first; his actions significantly called that assumption into question for me. I still like Brett Favre: I just can’t help myself, but neither can I help but feel more than a touch disappointed, nor can I watch him play for the Jets. His tale should have ended last Monday night at Lambeau with a ceremony to honor him and retire his jersey. Dénouement.

By contrast, Armstrong’s return to cycling, while risky at age 37, brings with it a drama of a different sort. To continue my earlier metaphor, Armstrong’s return is more like a long-awaited sequel rather than an epilogue the author should have scratched. And I, for one, am quite ready to read this tale.

Live Strong.