John Cusack compared the "promise" of the Obama campaign to "Antigone before the king." The comparison illuminates something we have to acknowledge.In Sophocles' play, Antigone defies the king's decree, but without building allegiances, without words. She violates the king's decree solely with her silent determination to do what she believes is right. The king's decree has good intentions, but there is an ignored perspective that invalidates it. Antigone em... Read Full Story
When I first watched this video, I thought to myself, why is FOX News the one breaking this story? Isn't this an example of what FOX pundits would have called the liberal media's unfair attack on Sarah Palin? And then I read that the RNC did not buy Palin's $150k wardrobe. According to Newsweek, Palin was told to purchase three outfits for the convention, but instead, she went on a crazy spending spree:While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at w... Read Full Story
I'm overwhelmed. My thumb is dead from responding to text messages yesterday. My phone is dead. My throat is sore from yelling. My neighborhood was dark, but we were howling and honking back and forth with people over the hills, in the distance. We live in a conservative town, in a conservative state. We couldn't see anyone else celebrating, but we could hear them. We knew we weren't alone.McCain opened his arms to Obama last night. Bush opened his arms to Obama this morning. Obam... Read Full Story
There are still certain scenarios where McCain can win this. Not all polls put Obama in the lead. Each pollster adjusts his numbers in order to get what he believes will be the right percentage of Evangelicals, Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, white men, women, elderly, college students, Republicans, Democrats, etc. So the polls vary wildly.The polls don't really tell us anything in an election that differs so dramatically from other elections. If you can't tell in what percentages ea... Read Full Story
The following conversation is an ongoing debate that ensued from an earlier post I wrote. In light of Michelle Bachmann's (R-MN) desire for the press to investigate anti-American sentiment in Congress, my questions have to do with this poster Sandie Coleman's similar perspective. What percentage of American voters see the country in this way? How will that affect the leadership abilities of an Obama presidency? And more importantly, how does that howling call to weed out "anti-Am... Read Full Story
Has anyone ever heard of Brightkite? It's a creepy alternative to Twitter. Instead of merely stating what you are doing, Brightkite uses your IP address or cell phone's coordinates to tell everyone where you are doing it.How does this change the dynamic of internet stalking? Imagine a pedophile who doesn't have to convince young adolescents to give up their locations in order to find them. I recognize that Brightkite has privacy settings. But how many parents are aware of everythi... Read Full Story
I have to acknowledge that while I have addressed educational concerns on this site, this is not a typical post for Roundhouse Rhetoric. But I didn't write this for Roundhouse Rhetoric. I wrote this for Compspot as a follow up to a teaching workshop I conducted on Friday about using blogs in the classroom.For those who are not interested in teaching writing, but who are interested in blog-promotion tactics, this post does offer something for you. It addresses how to increase a blog's ... Read Full Story
A lot was said in tonight's debate about Joe the Plumber. Here's the actual discussion between Barack Obama and Joe the Plumber, uncut and uncensored by Fox News: Read Full Story
As stated in my last post, the realities of our economic crisis snuck up on the McCain campaign and undermined McCain's strategy to make national security the central issue of this election. As a result, McCain's tactical use of Bill Ayers lost its surrounding strategy and unfortunately took a center role in McCain's campaign. Without a larger argument, the repeated reference to Obama's middle name and Palin's likewise repeated assertion that Obama "sees America as im... Read Full Story
