Artie Lange, the Marketplace of Ideas, and Blaming the “PC Police”

This will be a quick post because 140 characters just isn’t enough space to communicate effectively on this topic. In fact, the tweet above is only one of many it took Artie Lange to communicate his perspective on ESPN’s Cari Champion. If you haven’t heard, comedian Artie Lange is up in arms because in response […]

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Should we “Never Forget” or should we “Remember”?

On last week’s anniversary of the 9/11 attacks I saw post after post on Facebook asking that we “Never Forget” (a visual analysis of these posts is a whole different topic I won’t cover here). I know these posts were made by well-intentioned people still mourning those events and so my comments are not meant […]

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The Fightin’-ist Fightin’ Farmer I Know

Just over two weeks ago, LHS lost a great alum and friend in Clint Brown. I’d known him since we were kids and thoroughly enjoyed rekindling our friendship thanks to Facebook. There are three things about Clint that I remember most and while they make up more of a Venn diagram than a set memories pointing […]

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26 Valentine’s Day Songs for People Who Prefer Halloween

No, this has nothing to do with rhetoric directly (well, there’s the rhetoric of music and sound, but that’s not what I’m thinking about today). Another snow day and a hundred happy-go-lucky Valentine’s Day posts on Facebook (not that there’s anything wrong with that) got me thinking about what an alternative Valentine’s Day playlist might […]

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He Didn’t “Just Snap”

This was the headline at the top of the 6 o’clock hour tonight on CNN–the proclamation that the Navy Yard shooter, Aaron Alexis, who killed at least twelve people on September 16th–simply “snapped”.  In this quick post I’d like to highlight the rhetorical importance of choosing to identify the behavior of Alexis as just “snapping” […]

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Don’t You Know That It’s Different for Girls?

I’ve read with great interest all of the responses to Mrs. Hall’s blog post, FYI (If You’re a Teenage Girl). There has been a lot of criticism of her “slut-shaming” (not my favorite way of naming the issue, I admit) as well as her incredibly unforgiving position of blocking these young women from Facebook on […]

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There’s Something You Should Know: Seven Life Lessons Duran Duran Helped Me Learn

After reading Jennifer Makowsky’s “Ten Life Lessons I Learned from Being a Die-Hard Duranie” on Ape Culture.com, I felt the need to respond as a fan from age 14, a feminist, and a communication professor who studies and teaches about gender and popular culture. I’m always happy to see people taking pop culture seriously. Too often, pop […]

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