Making it Official
APELCers, although we’d know the “presumptive” candidates would be their respective parties’ nominees for many months, Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s nomination acceptance speeches at the conventions in Denver and St. Paul made their candidacies official.
I’ve posted an extra-credit opportunity for you on your class page in which I’ve asked you to analyze, and compare and contrast each candidate’s presentation. Here’s video of both for you to consider as you work out the optional assignment:
Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention Nomination Acceptance Speech, Denver, Colorado, August 28, 2008.
John McCain, Republican National Convention Nomination Acceptance Speech, St. Paul, Minnesota, September 5, 2008.
AP Language Class Notes
Seniors and juniors, second period saw Marie tell us about Zoroastrianism; Sam, Baha’i; Andre, Mormonism; and Elise, Hinduism; fifth period processed the anti-Pride Time rhetoric plastered all over campus today and began watching The Persuaders .
Fifth period meted out the speaker, context, audience, argument, presentation (logos), common grounds and values (ethos), emotional anticipations and manipulations (pathos), call-to-action, and effectiveness of the shellacked handbills, though I reminded everyone that while the non-violent pamphleteering-style resistance was admirable, the flyposting aspect was troubling―the custodians, not the posters, will be responsible for scraping the handbills off the concrete.
But note that while you, students, are taught in school to admire and emulate the spirit of the status-quo-resistant activist-reformer (Paine, Wilberforce, Wollstonecraft, Douglass, Anthony, Gandhi, King), the guerilla act was little admired by the-powers-that-be, one going so far as to call the posters “poison”.
I snapped a couple of photos of part of the scene. I’ll post those and a recreation of the mocking pamphlet itself (along with its original positive counterpart) later, and I’ll further address the frustration at the lack of voice Chloe mentioned and possible solutions for interested students to explore.
Bring food to our last class. (I like the bacon, egg, and cheese burrito from Nico’s.)
MOZART’S BALLS: Yes, the confection bearing the name is real. Popularly known as Mozart’s Balls by travelers and tourists, the Mozartkugeln (Mozart balls) (pistachio, marzipan, nougat, and chocolate) were introduced by an Austrian confectioner in the closing years of the 19th century. They don’t taste very good.
Campaign Art
Well, Tuesday’s poltical action in Rhode Island, Ohio, Texas, and Vermont turned out better for some than others. Hillary Clinton survived, and Mike Huckabee didn’t, the former (arguably) less expected than the latter. Maybe it all came down to campaign art.
Campaign graphics and logos are important, more important, perhaps, than many of us realize. Indeed, I was suprised to learn about the intricate rhetorical subtleties of the various campaign logos while I listened to a recent interview with Wired magazine’s Scott Dadich on campaign art at the The Economist’s “Democracy in America” blog. Salon.com also recently posted a piece on the same: “May the Best Logo Win”.
Linkjam!
Mostly for APELC students, here’re some links I mentioned to you which are germane to our recent activities.
After reading “On Compassion” by Barbara Ascher, I referenced “A Dollar a Day”, a recent, four-part BBC documentary. Worth listening to and wondering about when you plunk down $4.00 or more for a Starbuck’s macchiato.
Eric Wilson, author of Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, was interviewed on NPR this week about engaging melancholy. Interesting listen in consideration of our late encounter with John Stuart Mill’s and his thoughts on happiness.
Finally, here’s an article from Newsweek, particularly noteworthy for Blaise and Eliza who’ve recently referenced the “safety” of one of Amsterdam’s most famous attractions for their argumentative papers in favor of legalized, regulated prostitution: “Turn Out the Red Light?” Seems like the fun’s over in that very special and unusually aromatic section of the city.
AP Language Class Notes
Objectives: APELC students argued and defended a position on a current issue.
Juniors and seniors, today you tackled the following article from The Daily Mail: “Britain kow tows to China as athletes are forced to sign no criticism contracts”. In a delicious twist, I asked you to defend China’s request of participating nations’ athletes, which I thought might be good practice, that is, you fighting for a controversial, perhaps unpopular position.
The discussions were interesting, but Shawn made an incisive point when he suggested that those athletes who felt strongly about the problem of China’s human rights violations should boycott the games altogether, forsaking their training for the sake of their oppressed fellows. How might Tommie Smith and John Carlos have acted differently?
I said I’d post some links to resources that might help background the issue for those interested, and a good place to start, I think, is with the visceral event from recent memory, the Tiananmen Square massacre of Chinese dissidents in 1989. Frontline highlighted the dissidents’ oppression, first with a focus on The Gate of Heavenly Piece, a vivid documentary film ten years hence, and then in an episode simply entitled “Tankman”, which uses one figure’s “lonely act of defiance” as a critical historical lens.
Be sure to examine Human Rights Watch page on the history of China’s human right abuses. It’s difficult, maybe, to wrap our minds around the fact that other people in other parts of the world don’t enjoy the same rights we are secured here, but because it’s difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try or that we shouldn’t act.
The Myth of Che
Human beings love icons, indexes, and symbols. Wedding rings, sunglasses, dwellings, statues, flags, banners, cars, posters, money―all of these are in some way iconic, indexical, or symbolic in nature. Don’t think you have your own appreciations? Look at the way you style yourself for public consumption, think of the words that come out of your mouth, think of the fetishes you enjoy. Maybe it’s collecting troll dolls, or maybe it’s the new rims you just got for your ride, or maybe it’s the books you read in public spaces with the covers showing ever so slightly so that others can wonder at the genius who’d read such great works―each of these, and almost everything we do is somehow metaphorical or tropic (see number 2).
What happens when symbols are turned on their heads? (Witness the irreversible change in conventional meaning of the swastika from its roots.) What happens when a symbol of Marxist social and economic revolution becomes a meaningless icon for commercial consumption? Read about it at The Economist, “A modern saint and sinner”.
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The Rhetoric of the Helmet
Helmets have to be cool. So argues Tyler Hansen in an article in today’s Star, evaluating the football helmets of several of southern Arizona’s high school teams. Among the headgear being judged, my former school’s deep blue and flaming “P” (cool site, no?) and CDO’s own unmistakable Dorado-embellished green (level 1).
Why do they have to be “cool” (level 3)? What’s the uniform, in general, arguing (level 2 leading to level 3)? What else is there to note about the uniforms not only our athletes and others wear, but the ones we wear everyday (levels 1 and 2)? (Do we wear uniforms? You bet we do. And everything we wear and how we put it together―presentation, figure, logos―as you know, is an argument.)
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Elections ‘07 and ‘08
Are you paying attention? I hope so. There’s more going on and there’s more at stake than you probably realize. I just added some new links to the Activism page that will lead you to vital election information.
I encourage you who are interested in Presidential electioneering (which should be all of you, that is, the seniors and juniors who’ll be voting next year, and even the freshmen who’ll be in a few years) to check out the Online NewsHour’s Vote 2008 pages with even coverage of all the Democratic and Republican hopefuls. So called commerical, “mainstream” media devote very little, or at least not equal, time to any candidates but the frontrunners. Are you gonna trust CNN and FOX and CBS and NBC and ABC to deliver the whole story?
I hope you’ll take the time to educate yourselves. Maybe it’s not as fun as watching “That 70’s Show” or “Parental Control”, but it’s important. I mean it. Important like you can’t even begin to believe. Be informed by informing yourself―it’s your responsibility as a citizen of the state of Arizona and the United States of America.
Here’s something you won’t necessarily see on FOX or CNN except as the butt of a joke, the debut campaign video from former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel who’s currently seeking the Democratic Presidential party nomination:
And check out the Senator’s recent interview on the NewsHour―very different from other candidates. Amateur rhetors: Speaker, context, audience, argument? Presentation? Common ground or values? Emotional anticipations or manipulations? Action? I dare you to give it a try.
Jena, LA and Little Rock, AR
On Thursday some APELC students were considering the context of Gloria Naylor’s “The Meanings of a Word” and wondering about issues of racism and violence. It’d be nice to think that particularly in the West, we’ve begun to overcome differences of race and ethnicity, but make no mistake: Racism and racially motivated violence (and the eruptions that ensue) are alive and well in the 21st century and in no way are threatening to abate. Witness the winter 2000 riots in Spain, spring 2001 riots in Cincinnati, Ohio, the summer 2001 riots in Britain, fall 2005 riots in France, and the current unrest in Switzerland over apparently racist propaganda.
Hopefully (sentence adverb―score it!), you’ve been following the recent controversy in Jena, Louisiana over some black kids, some white kids, a tree, and some nooses (litotes). These are the events of the day, kids, the events that will define and motivate us to justice and best action.
Take some time to listen to the NewsHour piece, and examine the full coverage of the Case of Louisiana’s Jena Six at NPR. And it might be worthwhile to reflect on the history of race and rights by listening to the story of “Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine”.
Don’t be afraid to post your thoughts on these most important issues. Click the link above to leave a comment.
The Creative Best?
The American Society of Magazine Editors has released its list of the forty greatest magazine covers from the past forty years, and Smashing Magazine, which promises to “smash you with the information that will make your life easier offers creativty sparks from masters of graphic design.
The covers serve a different purpose than the images, but they’re all visual text and speak to particular audiences. They all argue something, too; that is, their creators all intended some message to come across to their audiences. Some of the messages are obvious, others aren’t.
Care to comment on specific covers or images? The covers offer some valuable cultural insight (context). Perhaps you’d like to offer some quick observations on their rhetoricity? Maybe even analyze and evaluate the editors’ choices? Click the link above to let us know your thoughts.
The Editorial Cartoon
I’m not necessarily a fan of editorial cartoonist David Fitzsimmons—I think he’s a little smug and kind of boring—but last week (I’m always behind) he offered an opinion in the Arizona Daily Star in which he asserted the historical significance and the modern importance of American editorial cartoons, and lamented the dwindling of their artist-creators in the nation’s newspapers. “Searing visual satire is as American as an apple pie in the face,” he asserts of the medium that stretches from Thomas Nast to Gary Trudeau, “A cartoon doesn’t bother to carefully prosecute the accused with arguments. That is the realm of the editorial writer. A good cartoon condemns and executes on the spot”. And all this, Fitzsimmons affirms, in the space of the size of a Pop-Tart.
American political satire of all forms has a storied history, and finds its modern expressions in programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, probably the most popular among others in the television field, and we’re fortunate that we have the liberty to speak and criticize publicly. New Zealanders aren’t so fortunate: recent legislation was passed that effectively banned the use of images in media to satirize of political figures. And of course, editorial cartoons can lead to more than bruised egos as we witnessed last year with the publication of satirical images of the Muslim prophet Muhammad in the Netherlands.
What think you? Leave a comment by clicking the link above.