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Olivia Pope Redux

May 21, 2013 · Add Comment · In: Pop Culture, Race and Racism · Tagged With: Feminism, Gender, Pop Culture, Race, Sexism, Television

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What is Communication, Exactly?

May 13, 2013 · Add Comment · In: Academentia, Generations, I have to work?, Pedagogy, Pop Culture, Rhetoric, Technology · Tagged With: Education, For Wordies, Generations, Media Ecology, Pedagogy, Pop Culture, Public Speaking, Rhetoric, Speech, Teaching, Technoculture, Technology, Television

This week I encountered a moment of synchronicity that sheds light on the state of affairs in my academic discipline of communication(s), aka communication studies, aka speech communication, or well, the major commonly known as “it’s kinda hard to put into words.” The moment to which I refer is circular, a snake eating its tail. I received yet another email stating professional concern for eliminating public speaking in the general education curriculum and I watched a disturbing scene about the communication major in Two and a Half Men. I say it’s circular because I don’t know which – our representation in pop culture or our diminished status in the gen ed curriculum – is the chicken and which is the egg. Either way, we are the butt of the joke because on TV the tropes for our majors are athletes, failed journalism/business students, beauty pageant contestants, students on academic [...]

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The Big Book – How It Works

May 3, 2013 · Add Comment · In: This is my life? · Tagged With: Books, How to Do Stuff, I'm 50, Rhetoric, Sobriety

Fifty years, twenty five sober, my birthday is near, and here I am, all full of reflection.

Continuing the theme of influential books in my life, and these books are all about power…

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is like the Bible to me; I have internalized its principles, incorporating them into my breath. When I say “like the Bible,” I mean that I haven’t read the Big Book the way most Christians haven’t read the Bible: not often enough, not fully enough, and without as much mindfulness as I should. I usually find the book too historically specific and cumbersome to make it all the way through, so I cherry pick. Nonetheless, it remains essential to my core. So you see how apt my analogy is.

The twelve steps and their elaboration throughout the Big Book operate on a fascinating logic that elevated me to a new [...]

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In praise of amateurs

May 1, 2013 · Add Comment · In: Politics · Tagged With: Baton Rouge, Education, Politics, Queer, Technoculture

The tension between expert and amateur power/knowledge has always challenged me. Because we live in an anti-intellectual culture, our easy rejection of experts and our bootstrapping, overweening self-confidence make me enormously uncomfortable. On the flip side, I find the undeserved sense of superiority and entitlement deeply embedded in intellectuals, particularly academic intellectuals to be offensive. Plus, the long history of “expertise” that locked out voice and experiences of non-dominant people from major cultural forms caused centuries of erasure. As I say often, there are good reasons for the slogan, “The Personal is Political.” So, yes, I just rehashed the debate for you, probably unnecessarily.

At the TEDxLSU gathering in March, Tucker Barry of Capital City Alliance, gave a TED talk about the value of amateur. His talk was “right on, man” <insert power to the people fist here>. I just love Tucker and I’m honored to be a part [...]

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Saul Alinsky, the quintessential radical

May 1, 2013 · Add Comment · In: Politics · Tagged With: Books, Capitalism, I'm 50, Obama, Politics

In honor of May Day and my approaching semicentennial, I post this gem of a video, a portion of a documentary about the famous community organizer, Saul Alinsky. Talk about brilliance. This particular excerpt is simply prescient.

Alinsky is best known for his book Rules for Radicals, a primer on community organizing.

This book earned the right wing’s ire because Obama used it as his textbook for community organizing. Then they snapped to its brilliance and co-opted it, all the while trashing it for its socialist leanings. Indeed, the right’s non-stop Obama Bashing is a page right out of Alinsky’s book. Well played, my friends, well played.

Alinsky articulates principles and practices that are genetically encoded in me by my progressive family; the book gave me a logic to frame what I already knew bone deep. A central tenet: power is not only what you [...]

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I’m breathing in, I’m breathing out …

April 30, 2013 · Add Comment · In: The Quotidian (yadda yadda), This is my life? · Tagged With: Age, Blogging, I'm 50, My House, Sobriety

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Olivia Pope Redux

What is Communication, Exactly?

The Big Book – How It Works

In praise of amateurs

Saul Alinsky, the quintessential radical

I’m breathing in, I’m breathing out …

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Olivia Pope Redux

What is Communication, Exactly?

The Big Book – How It Works

In praise of amateurs

Saul Alinsky, the quintessential radical

I’m breathing in, I’m breathing out …

Categories

Archives

Tags

Blogroll

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Meta

Catch me if you can!