And the first issue is out! Jim “Aughneigh” is the first President of F*NCA, too.

Your good company and attempts at influencing bad behavior reminded me how much I like you.

Meredith Bagley, Deanna Matthews and I finished a final program for the UNconvention at the Embassy Suites during NCA. The program may be found at

https://webspace.utexas.edu/clouddl/UNconvention%20last%20best%20final%2…

Please circulate widely to all of your division and caucus lists and to friends and colleagues.

We still need volunteers to make 100 copies (front to back, stapled) and
bring them to Hennessy’s Gaslamp Thursday night for distribution. Party details:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=34810643182&ref=mf

An email from my dearest friend, John McKenzie:

Go read this website. It was the advertisement across the top of the DrudgeReport tonight, and it’s completely insane. It’s a petition for conservatives to sign to “Join the Resistance” against the Obama presidency.

http://www.grassfire.org/111/petition.asp?pid=18651528

Just had to show this to someone before my head explodes…

-John

UT player removed for racial slur

“Buck Burnette was removed from the UT Longhorns for “unspecifiied reasons.” The now former Texas backup lineman Buck Burnette apologized Thursday for posting a racial slur on his Facebook page about Barack Obama being elected president.”

Weird….where was this response with the ghetto fab party?

Dylan: You went over to the McCain side of the porch?

Siddhartha: I just wanted to see what it was like!

Eli: Traitor!

Siddhartha: But they were giving out more candy over there!

Dylan: Traitor!

http://www.slate.com/id/2203667/

Given the disappointment a number of states have been over same-sex marriage (Arizona, Florida, and now California), I thought some of our Blogora readers (especially those at UT) may be interested in the following petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/dpbforut/petition.html

“Domestic partner benefits are among the most tangible ways that an employer chooses to express the value it holds for a loyal employee. Without domestic partner benefits, gay and lesbian employees will forever remain a separate and unequal group of workers.”

— Human Rights Campaign

This New York Times article is interesting. If you don’t have time to read the full story, here are some excerpts I randomly selected:

Berlin: Others gave grudging respect to the American people’s intent, if not their celebrated president-elect. “Even though he doesn’t stand for change, I guess it’s a sign of change that people vote for him,” said Laura Weidinger, 17.

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I still remain humbled by this story.

The 44th President.

Courtesy of Josh Gunn:
Professors’ Liberalism Contagious? Maybe Not

Excellent.

Along the lines of “Swing Vote” with Kevin Costner, organizations are trying innovative ways to “guilt” people into voting with the whole “what if Obama lost by ONE vote–YOUR NON-VOTE” scenario.

I received this email from “MoveOn.Org” now, and I laughed out loud. The video takes a few minutes to load, but it’s worth it:

Dear MoveOn member,

Oversleeping. Getting the car fixed. Having to pick up the second-cousin’s stepkids on the other side of town. These are just a few of the reasons millions of Americans won’t vote on November 4th.

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John McKenzie sent me this article today (Jim, you’re familiar with the author, David Cheshier):

Are there images we ought not see?

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I’m currently at work on my prospectus for my dissertation. A few of my research questions thus far (in rough draft stage, I know):
•How has the ideological terrain of free speech changed since nine-eleven? Why?
•How have the changes in free speech impacted political agency/political practice?
•How have the changes in free speech restrained or opened up new sites of struggle/political agency?
•How are the norms of free speech located in power? Under what conditions is free speech oppressive? Who has free speech? Who gets to decide who has free speech?

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I’m on a visual rhetoric kick this week, but the BBC’s post of “In Pictures: US Election Memorabilia” is just too awesome to not post.

Wait until you see Palin’s head photo-shopped into the classic “We Can Do It” Rosie the Riveter image….ummm….I’m getting more and more annoyed with the fallacious reasoning that just because she is a woman ergo she is a feminist. Sigh.

A whimsical riff on the bookmobile, Louis Soriano’s Biblioburro is a small institution: one man and two donkeys. He created it out of the simple belief that the act of taking books to people who do not have them can somehow improve this impoverished region, and perhaps Colombia.

Lee Sustar critiques the bailout plan of 2008.

Around 1am this morning, I was perched on the sofa grading, watching the History Channel. They had a great special on “Secrets of Body Language” where experts dissected the nuanced gestures, facial expressions, voice, etc of social and political leaders, including McCain and Obama. It’s worth a watch (or purchase) for classroom discussions, methinks. It airs again this coming Saturday, October 25th at 5pm.

While we’re preparing for the upcoming boycott at Manchester…The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples have the right to marry, reversing a lower court decision that had concluded that the civil unions legalized in the state three years ago had offered the same rights and benefits as marriage.

Attention Lambda Pi Eta and Sigma Chi Eta members!
As part of Free Speech Week (October 20-26 — for more information check out: www.freespeechweek.org), NCA is sponsoring an essay contest. Participants must be current undergraduate LPH or SCH members. The winner will receive $100 and the winning essay will be printed in Spectra. The essay topic is outlined below and is due by noon on Monday, October 20, 2008. Submissions should be in emailed to bmello@natcom.org in word format.

Free Speech Week Essay Topic:

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“Senator Collins” is a parody of Peter Cook, the former Australian Minister for Shipping.

I appreciate Josh Gunn’s latest words on the NCA Boycott, so much so I’m linking directly to them.

I’ve been relatively quiet about this issue because it IS political and because CRITNET has covered almost every perspective one could take on the NCA boycott issue.

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If you need a break today…

Zizek on Obama’s campaign rhetoric: “When Obama talks about the ‘audacity to hope,’ about ‘a change we can believe in,’ he is using a rhetoric of change that lacks specific content: To hope for what? To change what?”

Gratitude and love to Josh Gunn for sending this one our way.

If you haven’t already received the email, Dana Cloud’s thoughts on this year’s NCA Convention are thoughtful and provocative. She suggests several courses of action for protesting the social and political conditions which set the stage for scholarship about….social and political conditions. The email in full follows:

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Here’s the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing — the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party — are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women — and to many men too — who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the “white-male-only” sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

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Well, what we always knew about Jim Aune is now officially recognized by NCA: he embodies Emerson’s Man-Thinking! Jim, alongside three other fabulous scholars, comprises the NCA 2008 class of Distinguished Scholars:

James A. Aune, Texas A & M University

Leslie A. Baxter, University of Iowa

Charles R. Berger, University of California, Davis

J. Michael Hogan, Pennsylvania State University

Distinguished Scholars are recognized for a lifetime of scholarly achievement in the study of human communication. Begun in 1991, the award is supported by the Mark L. Knapp Distinguished Scholar Fund. The Distinguished Scholars represent those scholars whom the Association would present to others to showcase our profession.

The four new Distinguished Scholars will be formally recognized at the 2008 NCA convention, during the Award Ceremony on Sunday evening, November 23, in the Manchester Ballroom of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, beginning at 6:30 pm.

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I’ve asked my students to read Burke’s, _The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle_ to help stimulate discussion about critical thinking and ethical communication. It’s been a few years since I’ve read this, so when I returned to read it again this afternoon, I was struck by the very first paragraph:

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Building levees, health care, the economy, THE WAR…I don’t know if it’s the arrests of protesters at the RNC or Palin’s ridiculous comments, or the “spectacular-ization” on Palin’s ridiculous comments, but today I couldn’t stop thinking about the protesters outside the 1964 DNC convention…

Sadly, I’m thinking this is probably a good start to my diss chapter on how the ideological terrain of free speech has changed post nine-eleven.

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Sadly, I’m thinking this is probably a good start to my diss chapter on how the ideological terrain of free speech has changed post nine-eleven.

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This post is slightly personal, but after one of my former students’ posted this story about online student-teacher relationships onto my facebook account, I started thinking about several things regarding being a graduate student educator, a female educator, a female educator who looks unfortunately younger than most of her students, and a college educator in general. So a brief trip down memory lane here, and then a bit about the article and facebook in general…

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Inspired by the discussion about to-protest or not-to-protest the NCA hotel, and reflecting on the social movement legacies (or an ambiguous legacy, as Zizek calls it) of 1968, I found this article by David Zirin, one of my favorites, about the politics of protest of the Olympics “shut up and play” athlete censorship policy worth a mention:

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Spinning off of Jim A’s concern over the McCain ads and Jim B and Cynthia’s discussion about the rise in implicit comparisons between Obama and Hitler, Josh Gunn has an excellent blog post about the new McCain ad.

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So my dearest buddy and colleague, John McKenzie, sent me this link tonight, and I cannot get over it:

“We’re familiar with drug testing for athletes, but officials at the Beijing Olympics will be taking things one stage further and examining competitors whose sex is in doubt…Read the story HERE.”

Philadelphia Reflects on Who is an American

Some people had a very specific idea. Ed Bezik of Latrobe, Pa., says an American is someone who speaks English. “When you’re in this country, you should speak this country’s language. We should not have to change to accommodate you,” Bezik says.

Independence Park Ranger Tom Degnen concedes that the United States doesn’t always live up to its own ideals. But he says an American is someone who keeps trying anyway.

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From NPR:

In the last couple of months, bloggers on both ends of the political spectrum have been railing against Congress’s rewrite of FISA — the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

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THIS might be a good classroom exercise when covering the Greek’s eulogies…you know, like after reading Thucydides’ eulogy on the Peloponnesian War…

In a response to a call from Slate.com, readers share their obituaries for about 600 of Starbuck’s U.S. stores:

5435 S. Cooper St., Arlington, Texas

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It’s sorta like the Madden Curse, but way more accusatory in tone…

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As I mentioned before, the British Sociological Association’s Theory Study Group hosted a conference in London almost three weeks ago on the events of May 1968.

The conference was truly excellent. Here are a couple of brief mentions from my graduate student perspective:

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I’m sitting in the airport on my way to London for the British Sociological Association conference (they are holding a 1968: Impact and Implications conference, similar to the one coming up this October at UT), and I’m catching up on reading (and posting).

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I asked my students to bring in examples of speeches that trouble in some form or fashion some of the ethical stances of communication that we discussed in the ethics unit. One student gave a very moving presentation, in which he came out to the class. He held a sign that read “I heard you” as he played the following youtube clip. Happy Anniversary, Stonewall.

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Happy Birthday, Buddy! And in your honor, the nation decided to give you a gift:

Obama Clinches Nomination; First Black Candidate to Lead a Major Party Ticket

love,

a (+ tons of voters)

p.s.: Thanks, Elizabeth, for being on the ball and posting about this–I figured I’d follow in your footsteps and give it some more spotlight.

This article on the ACLU website reminds me of my first semester here at UT: November 2005, the KKK rallied in Austin. Supporters were around 12 tops, protestors numbered in the thousands. The police barricades kept protestors so far away from the KKK rally that it raised a lot of questions about free speech.

This case seems to be asking those same questions:

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I’m (re)editing a paper on Annie Sprinkle and sex positive feminism (which I’ve mentioned on here before) to present at the British Sociological Association’s conference in London this July. The conference is called, “1968: Impact and Implications.” Sometimes I feel like I wander in a circle when it comes to sex-positive feminism, and yet I confess I am enamored. Trotsky forbid this liberal Echo of second-wavers ends in a Narcissistic drowning of third-wavers, though.

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The project Mr. Byrne has created with support from the public-art organization Creative Time is a kind of twist on the projects Creative Time has brought into being since it started helping artists use the city as a canvas in 1974. Often the organization finds dilapidated, neglected, historically rich buildings, and artists create installations inside, as the British artist Mike Nelson did last year when he turned a wing of the Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side into a dimly lighted labyrinth.

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I found RSA Seattle exhilirating. It was a joyful reminder of why I feel so honored to be able to research and learn in this field. The intersection between discplines/approaches was refreshing and intellectually stimulating; the people (both old and new) were intellectually generous and inspiring; and the panels, IMHO, were engaging.

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This one is for Jim, our techno-guru:

From Inside Higher Ed:

Hey You! Pay Attention

The students sit in class, tapping away at their laptops as the boring old law professor mechanically plods through his lecture. Except one. Instead of hunching over a portable computer or a notebook, he’s playing solitaire with a deck of cards on his desk. The professor halts his droning. “What are you doing?” he demands. The student shrugs. “My laptop is broken,” he says.

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