. . . going off the rails of a . . .

Music: Erik Wøllo: Emotional Landscapes (2003)

Friday, July 23rd.

GOOD DAY SUNSHINE

"Excuse me sir, but I really need to cut in front of you. I'm driving [a bus] to Seattle and we're late already, I need to talk to this guy."

"Sure, no problem."

"I know it's rude, and I apologize."

"Hey, no worries, I have an hour until my train leaves. But I should tell ya I've been standing here like 20 minutes. You might just run back there."

"Thanks for understanding. Where's the clerk?"

"He went to get a phone book for that older fellah. I don’t think it has anything to do with tickets. Something about a bike part. He went over to the back in there."

"So why's he taking so long?"

"I dunno, I've been here for quite a while, he keeps talking to this old guy. The old guy seems sort of out of it, if you ask me."

------

"12:30? No train is leah---oh, yeah. I see."

"What?"

"Your ticket is from Vancouver, Washington. You needed to book it from Vancouver, BC. And there's only one train from BC in the morning. It went out at 6:40 a.m."

"Fuck. I'm sorry. I meant 'shoot'."

"Yeah, [smiles] it happens many times a week. During the Olympics it was crazy. They need to change the website, I know it's confusing. Every week---"

"Well I need to get there ASAP. What can we do?"

"I suggest you go catch this bus to Seattle. It arrives at 3:30 p.m. Right outside of McDonalds. I'll route your ticket here."

------

"[huffing] The bus is gone. I think I was in line with the driver and let him cut in front of me. If only I was a jerk I might be on that bus."

[discussion]

"I can't get you to Tacoma. I can get you to Seattle, train arrives at 10:10 p.m. You need to be here at 4:30 for boarding and customs."

"Book it."

------

THURSDAY, AFTERNOON . . . NOW I'M ON MY WAY

"Is this a formal affair? What should we wear?"

"Well, I know the organizers wanted folks to dress casual. Go "Texas casual," you know, jeans and a nice blouse or something."

"Got it, makes sense. See you in a bit."

"Actually, I'm still in Vancouver---sitting on a train. It's a long story; not sure how I'm going to get to Tacoma."

"Oh no!"

"Yeah, I'm supposed to catch a bus at 10:16 to Tacoma tonight, but I have like six minutes to make a connection. And this is a train, and trains are never on time."

"Call King Cab, they have a flat $45 fee from Seattle to Tacoma."

---------

"No sir, that's for airport to major hotel. You're coming from---could you hold?"

"But I'm on roaming minutes, I can't [click]."

------

SO COLD THE NIGHT

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your conductor. We're about five minutes from Bellingham, but I have some bad news. Those of you getting off in Bellingham---as well as everyone else---are going to be a little late, maybe a lot late, there's no way to know. We're in single-track county, and we've learned a freight train full of coal has broken down in front of us and needs to be repaired. There's nowhere for us to go, so, we have to stand-by until the train is repaired. This could be a short wait, it could be a long wait. I'll let you know more information as it becomes available."

"No way! I have to be in Boston tonight. My brother deploys to Afghanistan tomorrow!"

-------------

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your conductor. We apologize for the delay. We've learned that the linkage between two cars on the coal train has broken. It's something called a "knuckle," and they're having to rush in some parts. It's going to take a while. They just can't seem to get this train put back together. The good news is that we're going to show another movie, The Bounty Hunter, starring Jennifer Anniston. Jason will be selling headphones for a meager four dollars----"

"Four dollars? What the hell? They should give us them for free, and some free cocktails too! And send Harrison [a tall, attractive train staffer] over here "

-------------

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your conductor. Again, we're sorry for the delay. I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the coal train is repaired. In a short moment you'll notice the train moving backward. We're moving to a sidetrack so that the coal train can move past us.

The bad news, however, is that we got another situation. On the other side of the coal train is the northbound Cascade. They were to also be on a sidetrack to let us pass them by. Unfortunately they have a situation on one of their cars. I'm told a man on that train was so irate that their train was late that he caused quite a scene. Law enforcement is needed to remove this man from their train, so, they are currently at the Bellingham station. Once the police have the passenger in custody, we'll be on our way to Seattle.

"No fuckin' way! You gotta be joking me! This is starting to get fuckin' ridiculous! We're not getting in till 3:00 goddamn AM! I gotta fly all the way to Boston!"

"Hey man, don't you lose it too. We ain't got the time for police to remove you too. We need to laugh about this."

"That's right. This is pretty ridiculous."

"Perfect storm!"

"Hah ha ha ha ha. . . first it's the coal train---cooooooooooooaaaaallllll train! Now they takin' two damn hours to get this disorderly passenger off the northbound cascade? Give. Me. A. Break." [peals of laugher from car six.]

"Yeah, I'm supposed to be on stage in 30 minutes. It's not gonna happen."

"Oh no! What band."

"The Parallels."

"No shit? Sweet."

"Yeah. But I have no way of telling them I'm not gonna be there."

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I'm sorry to say this, but . . . . "

------

WHEN MY LOVE COMES TUMBLING DOWN

"No sir, there is no bus service this time of night.

--------

"Do you take debit cards?"

"Yes yes yes. Get in. [loads luggage]."

"Where to?"

"University of Puget Sound"

"Hmm. Ok."

"Is that going to be more than $60? I only have about that to spend."

"Oh, less than that I think."

--------

"It is difficult for me to use credit cards, because I have to call it in and get approval, and it's past 2:00 a.m. We can pull off at a bank and you can use the ATM."

"No sir. I asked you before I got in if you took credit cards, and you said yes three times. I'm not going to use an ATM because that'll cost me $10 in fees, and you'll be running the meter. This is not fair."

--------

"$87."

"But you said it would be less than $60!"

--------

"Thanks for waiting Mr. Gunn. We apologize, but, we don't have an access card for you. Joe will let you in the building for now, but you'll need to get an access card from the conference organizer in the morning. Have a nice night."

blame Canada

Music: Erik Wøllo: Emotional Landscapes (2003)

My neighbor Mike described Canadian customs as "the Royal Welcome," and boy did I receive it today. Stay tuned.

Mike, an unapologetic hippy and successful businessman, has a second home here in Vancouver, where he likes to spend a lot of time (especially summers). Our mutual friends and former neighbors Graham and Marsha just moved to Vancouver, and I'm currently sitting in their guest bedroom. It's somewhat strange to be looking at beautiful vistas and mountain peaks, in 70 degree weather, with my "Texas Family," but I'm damn glad and happy I'm here. Actually, I'm heading down to Tacoma for a conference (which I hope to blog about as it is in progress) on teaching rhetorical criticism tomorrow. But since my Austin peeps are here in Vancouver, it seemed like I needed to turn this into a Pacific Northwest tour, so I flew in here and will come back after the conference for a couple of days to play.

I thought Boulder was paradise in July. I thought wrong. It's definitely Vancouver. Jay-sus.

Ok, but to the "Royal Welcome." I finally get to Canada. I pass through the sentry and their 20 questions ("ever been to Canada before?" "Why are you here?" "What is your profession?" "Where do your friends live" and so on). As I'm waiting for my bag at baggage claim, I whip out my laptop to use the free wifi and check email. I'm approached by a cop. "Excuse me sir. Can I see your passport and claim check?" Ok, so I hand it over and he starts asking me the 20 questions again. "I'll hold on to this," he says, and then just walks away with my passport and exit pass. So, I close up my computer, get my bag, and approach him.

"Walk with me," he says. He continues to ask questions: "Why are you here?" "Ever been in front of a judge before?" "Do you have a DUI?"

"To see friends," "no," and "no."

I'm herded in a room and told to stand at station 3. There's this long row of stations, and two people are having their luggage rifled through. I heave my luggage on a long table and the cop disappears behind a one-way mirrored room.

Crap. Here's the problem: In my luggage I have a huge stash of fresh tortillas. This is the one thing my friends cannot get in Vancouver, and the thing they craved. And you can buy a life's supply for like $2. And I did not check "food" on my customs ticket as I should have. Now, prepackaged foods are totally ok, but . . . I admit I was sweating.

OH MY GOD. I AM GOING TO GET BUSTED FOR TORTILLAS!

Ok, I realize it's amusing---which is why I am blogging about it. But, you know, I've never been to Canada before and I have this issue with authority . . . .

About ten minutes pass and the cop returns with my passport and ticket. "Here you go. Have a nice day."

No search. So what was all this about? My long hair? I mean, this IS Vancouver (Austin on steroids, but with more Asians and less boot----well, basically, all the hippie and none of the cowboy).

The Royal Welcome continued when the Avis dealer would not accept my credit card. The university hooked me up with a pretty sweet deal, but declined to tell me I could not use my preferred method of payment. Enterprise next door had no problem renting me a car . . . for $1100 a week! Holy crap. No thanks.

So, I took a cab to my friends' house. I was told the drive down to the states was gorgeous, which is why I wanted to rent the car. But not all dreams come true. Instead it's an Amtrack train ride down to Tacoma. I love trains, so this will work just as well.

And at a fraction of the price: $37.

Despite this travel-blah welcome, seeing my old neighbors has been great. We had a grill out, and then, caught a fireworks show on the gulf. Apparently I'm here during a sort of fireworks stand-off between a team from the U.S., Mexico, China, and Canada. Tonight was the United States' fireworks display, and it was fantastic. Long, creative, and fantastic. I regret I forgot my camera.

"Gee, thanks guys. Putting up a fireworks show for my arrival was really too much!" I joked.

"You're welcome," Marsha said. "We were on standby to start later if your plane didn't get here on time."

just because this gives me joy

it's synth-pop friday!

gibsonchrist antistar

Music: Dangermouse & Sparklehorse: Dark Night of the Soul (2010)

As I was leaving the house to get a little exercise yesterday afternoon, I read an email message from a friend. Her parting query was, "where will the Mel Gibson outburst fit into your ongoing project on publicity, affect, and recorded voice/tone?" It was a haunting question and I thought about it for the rest of the evening; I am a bit stumped. I've been arguing as of late that emotive or affective speech, when used skillfully, is eloquent, and that it is governed by the norm of "uncontrolled speech"---speech that is transgressive and violates commonly perceived boundaries. Gibson's speech in these tapes is certainly transgressive and (seemingly) uncontrolled, so to say that it is doing the work of governance is an understatement.

I daresay his speech on these tapes best captures what we mean by "evil." Listening to Gibson's hyperventilating rage, I was reminded at times of Legion's voice in the film The Exorcist.

If the tapes are authenticated (which is only a matter of days), there are only two ways this can go. The Hollywood way is self-disappearance.

Initially upon hearing the tapes, I was caught up in---as is everyone else---the content of Gibson's rants. I've tried to listen to the four tapes that have been released to date, but confess I'm having a hard time making it through them. What he is saying is painfully difficult to listen to, but when compared to Gibson's films, the tapes are also fascinating---if not something of an unintended DVD "director's commentary." I want to say a little about the content, and then address the question of tone and sound, because I think the latter contribute the overall creepiness in a significant way.

I think the lingering doubt as to whether or not Gibson is actually the person screaming on the phone can be put to rest. It certainly sounds like his distinctive voice. Voices are like fingerprints: no two sound alike. Those who do vocal impressions are funny because they come awfully close, and it's that uncanny closeness of sound---of "the grain"---that amuses. But, we make mental images of sounds in ways similar to the mental images of sights---so both can be fooled.

We can be certain the voice is Gibson's because of what he says (semantics) and how he says it (vocalics).

The man has a history of saying hateful things, anti-Semitic, racist, and homophobic. Misogyny has the same affective character as these other forms of hate because structurally they are the same: by rejecting or denigrating a "not-me," I build myself up. In short, we know this is Gibson because hating on a woman is consistent with his documented hatred of Jews, African Americans, and gay men.

Further, the U.S. public has "heard' Gibson say these things about women before---just not directly. If we can see his self-financed films as tracking, at some level, his desire, then you can literally observe everything he says about and to his former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva in the film The Passion of the Christ. Women in this film are either virgins or whores, and there is no in-between. Well, there is one in-between (s/he is Satan). The virtuous role for women defined by Gibson in his films is "helpmate." Women are to serve and nurture their men, as they are to be extensions of them (in a certain "biblical" sense, McRib and all). To the degree women exhibit autonomy, they are disobedient and deserving of punishment.

Of course, in the recorded rants to Grigorieva, Gibson insists that she is a "pain in the ass" (Gibson's on record as being obsessed by anality) and that her role is to please and serve him. That she exhibits autonomy---and even more impressive, that she stays calm and collected as he rants away---only makes him even more insane. It is when Grigorieva calmly asserts that Gibson is unstable, in need of medication, or is only interested in venting, not talking, that he counters with the demand that she should perform fellatio (an image fraught with gender power relation if there ever was).

If you listen to all the tapes, he is very well aware of what he is saying and doing, and he is enjoying it. It is very much "all about him." So, too, is the collected Grigorieva enjoying it (she knows she's recording this stuff on tape, after all). She doesn't hang-up, as most of us would do. Instead, she patiently listens, then interjects calmly, as if to goad him on, searching for the next thing to say that is the most offensive (the final stop, for Gibson, is the "c-" and "n-" words). By releasing these tapes, Grigorieva has effectively enabled Gibson to destroy his career.

That said, what abides the disturbing nature of what Gibson is saying is the painful ways in which he is saying it. As I was writing this blog, Shaun shared a link to a Salon.com story in which an anger management specialist observes Gibson's panting is characteristic of a panic attack, the most common symptoms being chest pain and shortness of breath. The gulps for air followed by peals of rage are an interesting counterpoint to the semantic meaning of what he's saying. So, for example, when he screams, "you can just f----n' smile, and blow me! Because I deserve it!" Gibson is forcing air out of his windpipe so fast it's almost tearing into his flesh. The phone receiver speaker cannot adequately handle the range of pitch and volume of his voice, so the sound breaks-up and is distorted. In limited doses, such enraged speech is terrifying, almost supernatural. However, the shear quantity of Gibson's rage, and the body encoded in voice, soon sounds like profound fear and desperation. When he says, repeatedly, "you f---g c---t," it feels like "don't leave me!"

From wider perspective, of course, this public release of uncontrolled speech is doing the cultural labor of self-discipline and surveillance: watch what you say, folks, or it could wind up on the Internet. (Remember kids, Facebook---just like cell phone calls---is forever!)

There is also a way in which Gibson's over-the-top, no holes barred reservoir of profane invention not-so-subtly reminds us that, as human beings, we are all capable of becoming unhinged and enjoying it. By enjoyment, of course, I refer to the conception of "hurting so good," of jouissance and the ways in which various forms of violence, verbal and otherwise, court that kind of translinguistic ecstasy. Gibson's rapturous screams keep reaching for the outer-limits of offense, as if a litany of murderous effing c-words will catapult him into a realm of sublime transcendence (hence, I think the best term here is "evil"). These enraged sounds are homologous the grandiloquent bloody flesh-blossoms of Jesus in The Passion of the Christ. Remember: there are two ways this can go, both destructive. In this respect, I think Gibson's rant shares something in common, at the structural-affective level, with the Tea Party movement: a will to destruction.

more on the boycott business, or, "no contest"

Music: Sad Lovers and Giants: Feeding the Flame (1983)

To follow-up on a recent Rosechron post, I've received a note in my inbox today from a conference coordinator from the office of the National Communication Association. As most readers of this blog know, the conference hotel for my profession's annual meeting is currently under a boycott request from the worker's union there. In response, NCA leaders have secured space three blocks away at San Francisco State University for meetings. Those NCA members who wish to honor the boycott can fill out a form to have their meeting moved to this alternative space. The directions state that all members of the meeting must sign the form, however, the national office told me today that each member of the meeting can print out the form and submit it independently (via fax, pdf, or snail mail). As long as all members of the meeting submit the form, their panel or meeting will be moved to the alternative space.

Of course, if you are on a panel for this year's NCA, it means you have, at minimum, five folks that need to consent to having the panel moved to the alternative space. Wonder of wonders, this is the first year at NCA in memory that I am not on the schedule multiple times---I'm only on ONE panel. Amazing! And to my disappointment, not all members on my single panel are comfortable with moving it to the official alternative space. What disappoints me, however, is not disagreement among my fellow panelists. What disappoints me is a general unwillingness to be upfront or earnest about one's views.

Some weeks ago I emailed the members of my panel to communicate that NCA had located off-site space, and that I would like to take advantage of the opportunity. I explained that NCA planned to return the panels to the conference hotel if the worker's boycott was resolved, and that the alternative site was only three blocks away.

Two folks responded immediately, saying that they were happy to go along with the move. Silence from the others.

Another panelist chimed in days later to say s/he would be fine with moving, but would prefer to stay in the conference hotel.

Eventually another chimed in to say that s/he was not comfortable with moving the panel, as s/he had a lot of business to attend to in the conference hotel and was not comfortable with a renegade conference.

I responded then that this was not a renegade conference, but an official move by NCA.

A final panelist was silent.

Days and days and days pass.

Another weighed in to report the panel was not actually scheduled in the Hilton (the conference hotel), but the Parc across the street, although the Parc is listed on the "danger" list of possibly being boycotted as well.

This goes on for days and days, so today I finally said to my panel I was giving up on "my desire." If the conference came and there was no boycott, I would be at the meeting. If the conference came and there is a boycott, I will not be at the meeting.

Now, it seems to me moving the panel is something of a no-brainer: NCA is willing to secure alternative space and move our panel if the boycott is still going by November. The space is three blocks away from the conference---walking distance. If there are time-constraint issues, certainly cabs are easy to hail in San Francisco. I know one of the panelists was concerned about having to go to three different places for the conference, which is apparently a hassle---but this concern was not expressed to all the panelists.

What really annoys me is not that people on my panel disagree with my "politics." I totally and completely respect and honor that disagreement. What annoys me is the unwillingness to be honest and earnestly disagree. In my view, the hemming and hawing and hand-wringing about my wish to move the panel is totally unnecessary. All anyone has to do is say, "Josh, while I respect your willingness to honor the boycott, I have no such willingness," or "I disagree with your politics." How hard is it to be disagreeable? Conflict is not always bad, and I'm not going to be mean to you if you disagree with my political views. If that was the case, I couldn't be a teacher! Hell, I can think of three people whom I consider best friends who will go into the conference hotel even if there is picketing---they don't share my political views, and that's ok!

So, I guess what I'm saying is that I'm frustrated by the general avoidance of folks and the fear of expressing their views on the labor issue. I was telling a friend tonight that it's taken me some time to come around to my position on the labor issue before---that I "get" not wanting to anger folks and that I appreciate the complexity of situation. Some folks simply have to go into the hotel---for jobs, for hiring, for all sorts of reasons. What baffles me is the silence, as if the resort to silence somehow is an apolitical stance. It's not. And it's frustrating to me that folks believe not expressing their views somehow makes the problem go away.

Everyone knows what pleading "no contest" means.

A convention is a meeting of people in one place. That one place need not be the "official" place. We'll all be in one city, in a limited set of city blocks. NCA is actively trying to accommodate those who wish to honor the boycott, bending over backwards given their constraints, and making non-convention hotel meeting spaces available. If folks don't want to move their panels, it's not because it's inconvenient. Rather, it's because it participates in a political gesture. I just wish folks could be honest about that, instead of hiding behind "no contest" or that they have to move three blocks away. It's ok to disagree! Just don't pretend silence or delay or concern for running among three spaces is "no contest."

I worry that the issue of the workers has sadly become conflated with the perception of a "clique" in the field, and that to honor the boycott means that one is part of this "clique." Well, I know this is probably the case. Somehow those of us who are down with progressive politics have to figure out how to make the issue less about us, and more about the striking workers at the conference hotel. I don't have any answers except to say this: the more voices we hear, the less likely this particular boycott will seem the project of a few seeking an identity. If you are reading this and agree that honoring the boycott is the right thing to do, speak out.

textbook teaser #4

Music: Gillian Welch: Revival (1996)

INFORMING WITHOUT TEARS

In final years of his life the infamous British occultist Aleister Crowley met an Englishwoman eager to learn about ceremonial magic. Her name was Anne Macky, and she had almost no background in the occult tradition, nor did she know much of Crowley's philosophy. In poor health and encouraged by the attention, Crowley wanted very much to inform his new acquaintance about his theories, but he was initially at a loss for where to begin. You see, for much of his life Crowley had studied a vast number of occult and mystical traditions—alchemy, astrology, the Greek Quabbalah, hermeticism—and wrote prolifically about them. He eventually developed a fairly sophisticated system of symbolism and a philosophy of "magick" that spans across thousands upon thousands of pages in books and occult magazines. Where does he even begin?

Crowley decided that he would ask Macky to pose him questions, and then he would answer them in a return letter. This method of informing his new pupil about magick proved successful, and soon the modern magus found himself in regular correspondence with a larger group of students. "Much gratified was the author," Crowley said of himself, "to have so many letters of appreciation thanking him for 'not putting it in unintelligible language' [and] 'for making it so clear that . . . I can understand it'." In fact, Crowley was so gratified by his students' appreciation that he published his easy-to-read letters into a book, which he titled Magick Without Tears. Since the 1940s, Crowley's more teacherly persona in this lettered collection is among the most popular of his many books, most of which are a difficult slog. The difference with Magick Without Tears had everything to do with Crowley's generous attitude toward his audience, and his willingness to—as they say—"meet them half-way." He figured out where his students were at in their studies, and then designed his informational campaign to adapt to them.

In many ways, the title of Crowley's dry-eyed book is your principle task as an informative speaker: you must convey information in a way that is clear to understand, but also in a way that is not insulting or that "talks down" to your audience. By knowing the general background knowledge that your audience will have about your topic, you will have a better sense of how sophisticated your speech should to be. Ultimately, when you are speaking to inform, you have one primary goal: to provide a new point of view or new information on a topic. To achieve this goal, you need to know what kind of topics folks tend to be informative about, as well as the way in which to discuss those topics. We'll cover all of this (and a knock-knock joke) in the pages to come. But first, we need to take something of a philosophical detour before we dive into the nitty-gritty.

[ . . . .]

Because speaking is always a request for a listener, some public speaking instructors believe that any speech---from a wedding toast to a classroom lecture---is persuasive. "There is no such thing as a purely informative speech," they argue, "this genre is a fiction!" Well, wherever you stand on the philosophical issue, from a pragmatic standpoint we can definitely say this: you are going to be asked to compose and deliver an informative speech for your class. So you're going to need to know something about why the genre of informative speaking can be distinguished from others. And I'm willing to bet that your informative speech assignment comes before a persuasive speech assignment? Am I right? See, your textbook author has magickal psychic powers (how's dem apples, Aleister?).

More seriously: while we can easily debate the finer points of where informing ends and persuading begins, the fact is that speaking to inform and speaking to persuade are different for two reasons: (1) speaking to inform is easier than speaking to persuade; and this is because (2) speaking to inform is about creating new beliefs or perspectives, while persuading is about changing them. In short, change is key.

it's synth-pop friday!

the boycott business

Music: Einstürzende Neubauten: Ende Neu (1998)

Although I'm desperately compelled to blog about LiLo's profane middle finger in court yesterday, a higher duty calls. As most of Rosechron's readers know, the conference hotel of my national professional organization, the National Communication Association, is currently under a boycott urged by the San Francisco area's service worker union. The convention is not until next November, however, there is no encouraging news. It doesn't seem likely the union and hotel management will come to an agreement over a contract by then.

Those readers who are members of NCA may not know that the national office has secured an alternative space for panels. Of course, if you tried to find this page by going to the NCA website, good luck. Fortunately I have hot-linked it for you here. This page details that panels can be moved to rooms at San Francisco State university, apparently just three blocks away from the convention hotel. To move your panel, all participants, including chairs and respondents, must sign this form. If you have difficulty with getting the form link to work, you can email me, as I have a PDF copy I can send you.

The deadline for submitting a panel shift is October 15th. I would encourage all of you who feel weird violating the boycott request to start the process now.

a pledge on the fourth

Music: Summerbirds in the Cellar: With the Hands of the Hunter (2006)

For just about every school day of my young life, I recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States. As an adult, I say the pledge every time I go to a lodge meeting. As a young person, I was not really caused to reflect on what I was saying when I made the pledge; reciting it was something like reciting the alphabet. In high school, I can remember a controversy erupting over the "one nation, under God" phrase---but honestly, even in my most anti-religious, rebellious years of the Great Teen Age, saying that phrase hasn't really bothered me (and make no mistake, I'm an agnostic). As an adult, I do think more deeply about the pledge every time I recite it. I probably recite it more than everyone I currently know or are close with---the exception, of course, being my fellow Masons.

Because of missed writing deadlines, I took the opportunity to write today and swore off social celebrations. I wrote a little, I graded a couple of seminar papers, and read the newspaper. I cleaned the kitchen as I listened to the radio (had a grand dinner with friends on Friday and lots of dirty pots to prove it). But since today is a national holiday, I did want to spend some of it to reflect on its meaning. (Listening to NPR this afternoon, however, I learned the actual date of the United States' assertion of independence was July 2nd; the 4th is when the documents were mailed to the states. In a sense, then, today is something of a postal holiday---the agency of the letter, indeed).

As an exercise, then, I want to meditate on the pledge I routinely make to my country. Here are my thoughts.

I pledge allegiance . . .

With my hand over my heart, to say that I "pledge" means that I am making a solemn promise. To say that I "pledge allegiance" means that I promise to be loyal to something superior to myself. It is a promise of prostration, a reverence to something that is not me, something outside of myself, and something that is much greater. When one takes a vow---for example, to another person in civil union---one is making a similar promise. To pledge allegiance is, in some sense, to offer surrender. A pledge of allegiance, however, is not blind adherence, nor is it a mindless surrender. Rather, it is a voluntary act of surrender to something over or for which I am not a master. In this respect, a pledge is something of a sacrifice. It implies a contract: I promise loyalty in exchange for something. That something is, for me, the reason I make the pledge. And I think it's a worthy something; I think it's a something that is worthwhile, of value. That's where the next phrases come in.

. . . to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands . . . .

This phrase has always struck me as somewhat redundant, because a flag is always symbolic of something else. So, to say that I pledge allegiance to the flag is not to be taken literally, and I've always thought folks who took the literalist route to the pledge really miss the point of pledging.

Never make a promise to a thing, a machine, an inanimate object. One makes a promise to another person or a people. Sometimes this comes in the form of an ideal, but even then, ideals are about people, the other.

Again: when one makes a promise, it is always to other people, not to some inanimate object.

Making a promise to an ideal is simply an indirect way of agreeing to treat other people a certain way. Nevertheless, I suspect wanting to ward off literalism is one reason why "and to the Republic for which it stands" was added. I have no problem, for example, with flag burning as a symbolic critique, because I do see this gesture as a form of speech protected by the republic "for which it stands." My allegiance to "the flag" is actually an allegiance to the republic, that is, to my system of government and the people who have agreed, however tacitly, to abide by its tacit promises.

To say that I pledge allegiance to the republic represented by my country's flag is to say that I promise to be loyal to an ideal regarding how to treat other people, however unrealized. That ideal is specified, of course, by the next phrases:

one Nation under God, . . .

Here is the phrase that seems to offend so many, and that offense has less to do with the actual phrase in the pledge than with how some people have used it to this or that political end (and by "political," I mean to be inclusive of "religious").

On the second page of the "metro" section of the local paper today, a local fundamentalist church took out a full-page advertisement featuring four of the "founding fathers": George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson (yes, that Thomas Jefferson), and Benjamin Franklin. Below each fatherly visage was a quote about the centrality of God, and in big fat letters in the middle of the page the phrase, "In God we trust" appeared. This church ad represents one of the ways I think this phrase, "one Nation under God," is often misrepresented.

Although the debate over the founding fathers' religious beliefs rages on, the general consensus of historians is that they were deists, or at least strongly influenced by the deism that permeated the Enlightenment. Jefferson's writings are most starkly deist, Franklin confessed he was one, and there are strong suggestions that Washington and Adams leaned in that direction. Deism is a complicated belief system and there's just no way to know for sure what these folks thought or believed in their "heart of hearts." Regardless, "God" is a pretty big word and inclusive of all kinds of different beliefs. Wrestling the "founding fathers" into a decidedly un-deist faith is dubious at best. I don't care how you slice it, the declaration of independence is inclusive of freedom from religious authority. The separation of church and state doctrine floated by Jefferson makes this pretty damn clear.

So, why the "one Nation under God" phrase? Well, this phrase was added relatively recently, in 1954. There's no question that it became part of the pledge because of religious folks (the Knights of Columbus figure in this history, interestingly).

But, I actually do not think it is out of step even with our founding Mac Daddies. They held fast to a supreme being ("the grand architect of the universe," as the Masons like to say), they just didn't believe s/he/it (joke intended) meddled in human affairs. "God" was more or less a recognition of fallibility, an admission of human imperfection. We also have to figure in the natural law doctrine: some rights were conferred, beyond debate, and we might as well say some superduper being made it so (since it puts natural rights beyond the purview of human dictate). Jefferson was keen to locate natural rights in a supreme being---and however ironically, to put the question above the dictates of organized religion.

For me, what "one nation, under God" means, considered with Jefferson, Adams, Washington, and Franklin, is that the ideals we hold dear are beyond any one person's ability to determine who does and does not get "liberty" and "justice." In a big way, this idea is the opposite of what many figures in organized religion would make of it. It is fundamentally an affirmation of humility and submission and an acknowledgement of human ignorance. Perhaps I am stretching the meaning beyond it's decidedly religious intent in 1954, but to say the state is "under God" is to say the state is not infallible, but subject itself to a higher calling. That calling does not need to be supernatural. That calling can be the better part of our natures, the part that recognizes equality for all persons---the part of ourselves that recognizes no one individual has the answers or solutions. "One nation, under God" means, for me, that no one group has the authority to say, for example, that queer people cannot enjoy the rights, lights, and benefits of marriage. Some folks would say that I am "perverting" the meaning, but then again: who knows the mind and intentions of that which is beyond human law---the will of God? To say that we are a nation under God, in my view, is a deist position. It is an admission of fallibility, of humility. Of ignorance.

. . . indivisible, . . .

This word is an assertion of sovereign unity. It is an ideal constantly tested and striven for, but not possible. Were it possible, there would be no need to assert indivisibility. But I do think we should be undivided on our dedication to the last phrase:

With Liberty and Justice for all.

No two words are more fraught than "liberty" and "justice" (ok, I overstate; "God" is more fraught) . . . and figuring out what these are and what these mean should rightly be a never-ending pursuit. When I say these words, I think of the historical struggles, over the past three centuries, to realize their meaning. It's hard not to promise an undying loyalty to their realization.

There are many things I dislike about my government's laws. There are many things I despise about certain people who comprise my nation's citizenry. But pledging allegiance to these words---to my republic---is not a blind commitment. I am a patriot because I can write these words and express my views without fear of death. I am a patriot---and Lee Greenwood's sappiness aside---when I think of my friends, when I think of the struggles of the past century to realize what liberty and justice for all means, I can say I'm proud to be an American. I am not a blind American. I will call out fascism and evil when I see it. But I promise submission and loyalty to the ideal that holds fast to my right and ability to be critical of my country--- the laws that allow me to assemble and disagree, the laws that allow me to decry injustice, the laws that make it possible for social and political change. There should be no shame in pledging allegiance to my country, because doing so is a tacit allowance to right the wrongs of my country's past. There is so much that is shameful in the history of the United States. But then again, we need to remind ourselves on holidays like today that there is room for hope. That room is created by the agreement that we can humble ourselves to each other, that no one is above the law---that no one is above God, whatever this or it is, most especially.

I recognize a post such as this evokes uncomfortable feelings for many of my friends. It tempts the charge of sentimentality, especially in light of innumerable injustices that parade across our screens on a daily basis. But even so, I pledge allegiance to my republic because there is one thing it stands for, often against its interests: continual and ceaseless change.

it's synth-pop friday!

introducing professor gotcha

Music: Low: Things We Lost in the Fire (2003) There was an interesting message from a professor of debate and theatre on my professional organization's email listserve yesterday. I could not help but respond.

James Brandon, Hotel Boycott (Again)...

How nice to see that our colleagues who are in permanent revolution mode are back and setting up the barricades in what has seemingly become an annual event: to protest NCA's choice of convention hotel.

Rather than argue the finer points of the SF Hilton, let me suggest a long-term solution for our protesting friends. I suggest that like-minded individuals from a variety of national scholarly organizations should take this opportunity to pool their resources and construct a year-round academic convention hotel that will be able to accommodate meetings 52 weeks a year, and will be run according to their utopian standards. My guess is that such a convention hotel would be both not-for-profit and subsidized by taxpayers. Perhaps we could even expand upon the NCA national headquarters in DC? Although, to be fair, the proceedings should be moved to the geographic center of the US. How does Kansas sound for all future NCA's?

I envision a place where NPR is used for elevator music, copies of The Nation are freely available in the lobby, the coffee is all fair-trade, and smaller academic associations can be subsidized by the larger ones. Sort of like revenue sharing in baseball. I assume that the location will be a smoke and meat free zone, and all the energy will be created by the wind and the sun. Tens of thousands of academics will visit the center at least once a year, and the location will likely become a scholarly paradise.

With this kind of clout, the center could bring in top notch and top dollar progressive speakers for the entire year, playing the gig like it was Vegas. At the very least, I think that every academic association would be interested in keynotes by the likes of Chomsky and Nader.

To keep costs down, I propose that each person coming to the convention be responsible for their own cleaning, laundry, maintainence issues and food preparation, so then we won't have to worry about striking hotel staff.

Any objections? Then please get started on this project. Until then, I'll be staying at the Hilton in San Francisco.

Best,

Dr. James M. Brandon
Professor of Theatre and Speech
Director of Forensics
Hillsdale College
Hillsdale, MI 49242

Joshua Gunn, RESPONSE TO JAMES BRANDON

Professor Brandon's remarks yesterday about the current boycott of this year's convention hotel are snide, inaccurate, and unhelpful. In a sneering tone Brandon proposes that those supportive of the boycott (whom he wrongly characterizes as "revolutionaries") "pool their resources" and build a conference hotel that apparently reflects some sort of presumed platform: only vegetarian food, NPR in the elevator, +The Nation+ on coffee tables, Nader and Chomsky as featured speakers, and so forth.

Buried in this mockery, however, are a series of claims deserving of correction, which I list and respond to seriatim:

1. Boycotting the conference hotel is an annual event.

This is not true. There were no calls for boycotting the NCA conference hotel in 2009 in Chicago, nor were there issues with the conference hotel in 2007, 2006, or 2005 that I am aware of. Those of us concerned with the NCA conference hotel THIS year are worried about the treatment of service workers, and respectful of their request that we support their fight for a humane contract.

2. Those NCA members supporting the boycott are homogenous (e.g., NPR-listening, non-smoking, vegetarian lovers of Kansas).

I cannot speak for everyone who honors the union's request. Nevertheless, I personally enjoy meat and the occasional cigar, even though I do love Kansas, especially Lawrence and the good folks at the university there. I do not read the +Nation+, however, I am addicted to +The Splendid Table+ on NPR. I do not believe in revolution, but I do believe in collective bargaining. As everyone knows, we only need one exception to combat a stereotype.

3. Any hotel selected for a conference of our size will be inappropriate to someone, offend this or that group's sensibility, and so forth.

Although it is true that no hotel is perfect, at the same time many hotels have comfortably accommodated the NCA convention with few incidents. The union of the Hyatts in San Francisco have asked NCA members to boycott the hotel +if+ 9,000 workers and the hotels cannot come to some agreement about a currently expired contract (see http://www.unitehere2.org/).

4. There is nothing wrong with staying in the San Francisco Hyatt.

This claim contradicts the attention the NCA leadership has given to the boycott. The NCA website has a webpage dedicated to disseminating information about the boycott to the membership:

http://www.natcom.org/index.asp?bid=15066

That the NCA leadership is taking this issue seriously indicates there may, in fact, be something problematic with failing to honor the boycott. Remember that the workers are fighting for workload protection, retirement, health care costs, and the rights of non-union employees.

Of course, the financial risk of moving the convention is high and I gather would be devastating to the organization. At the same time, this does not mean individual members should not carefully consider their options. Professor Cloud's respectful and informative post on CRTNET last week details a number of alternatives:

http://lists.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1006&L=CRTNET&T=0&F=&S=&P=36411

Finally, let me add that it is disappointing to see fallacious, argumentative tactics deployed by a debate coach (especially from someone who claims expertise in the work of Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht!). As a coach and teacher of argumentation, I would assume Professor Brandon is familiar with the faulty reasoning of hasty generalizations and stereotyping, as well as the fallacies of division, false dilemma, and so on. This means, of course, Brandon's strategy of dismissal and scapegoating is quite deliberate; his post is intended to direct attention away from the cause of the workers to some non-existent stereotyped, homogenous group of "revolutionaries."

Honoring the boycott is not about me or anyone else who chooses to honor the boycott. Rather, the +real+ issue is about 9,000 hotel workers, their families, and their futures. To these folks, the situation at the Hyatt is not a laughing matter. Sadly, I think Professor Brandon's snarling sarcasm represents the kind of cynical resignation that the field formerly known as "speech" was created to combat.

publishing: new irritations about late reviews

Music: Tendersticks: self-titled (1995)

Aside from the recent inability of my professional organization to keep reprint fees in check, the frustrations and irritations of publishing one's academic work continue to mount. I've detailed the trials and tribulations of the blind review process ad nauseum on Rosechron, mostly as way to vent frustration, but also to give budding scholars a sense of what they're in for---and also to offer encouragement. Just knowing that someone else has endured what you are enduring and that he or she thinks it sucks too, I hope, is helpful. If you try to publish, you will get rejected. In fact, odds are your manuscript at some point will be lost or forgotten (I've three good stories about this malady, in particular).

Folks frequently tease me about my publication record because I've been successful, but I try to remind them all those successes have come with setbacks, frustrations, and very bad (and sometimes unjust) reviews. I've been successful because I've been tenacious and can generally take criticism well at this point. I've also been successful because I've learned a lot from rejections and very kind, very generous reviewers who took the time to show me the ropes. Thank Goddess for the generous reviewers who have taken the time to outline what it takes to produce scholarship (something that, frankly, no grad program can really prepare you for; rejection is part of the learning process). Learning not to equate your worth as a scholar with any one essay you write is not easy, but you just gotta. Things get rejected. And sometimes not everything you put on paper---however long you've crafted it---is worth reading. I've got a huge file in my office to prove it. If you're productive, you're going to produce waste with the gold.

At this point in my scholarly career, however, I've moved "to the other side." I now review far more essays for publication than I submit---on average, I'd say, anywhere from five to ten a year (and sadly, most of them I reject). From the perspective of a reviewer, I've learned a lot about the review process. At some point I hope to share what I've learned that would be helpful to authors (e.g., proofread), but for this post I want to underscore the most pressing problem of publication for my field of communication studies: timely reviews.

I think it's fair to say, based on my experience in the past four years, that it takes on average two years to see an essay to publication. I am not, nor have ever been, an editor, but I'm willing to put all my chips on one color, and that color is that reviewers take too long to review. This is particularly problematic because of one simple fact: the tenure clock for most institutions has not changed for decades (five to six years). I don't think, given current economic pressures, we're going to be able to alter it. Newer generations of scholars are going to be pushed to publish more in less time. This is a real pickle for the humanities.

I currently review for seven journals, give or take a journal or two (for example, I'm a masthead reviewer for Rhetoric Review, and have not reviewed anything for Enos in over two years, while I am not on the masthead at CSMC, but have reviewed twice in the past semester). All of the editors of these journals ask for my review within six weeks (a few ask for four weeks). I have a handful of exceptions, but for the most part I get my reviews back within two or three weeks. In part, I hate having something to do looming over me---so I want to get it done (I'm very bad with deadlines---or very good---cause they drive me crazy). But part of the reason I hurry with my reviews is that I tend to review younger scholars---folks like me who are working on tenure, or just starting out.

Sadly, my attitude toward the reviewing timeframe is not shared by many. Of my last three publications, two were delayed for years because of no-show reviewers, or because reviewers refused to get their reviews back to editors in a timely manner.

Now, one would hope that editorial teams are scolding reviewers for their tardiness---but I am cynical. I know at least one editor---Marty Medhurst---runs a pretty tight ship and sits on reviewers for being tardy. But Marty is the only one I'm familiar with at the moment . . . .

Hence the exigency of this post. For some years I've been working on an admittedly "weird" essay that dabbles in interdisciplinarty, with a sprinkle of Derrida and cognitive brain research. It's a strange beast of an essay, to be sure. The journal to which it was originally submitted took one whole year to review it. When I got the reviews back, it was a "revise and resubmit," but then the editor stepped down and I knew if I sent it back I would basically be going through a whole new editorial team (that is, I knew any revisions would be moot, since the new team would want to send it to new reviewers). So, I pulled the essay, revised, and sent to a new journal almost fourteen weeks ago.

A few days ago I figured it was time to ask the journal "where we are in the process?" After all, as a reviewer I'm told six weeks is the maximum to take for a review, and I usually get my reviews into editors in three weeks or less. I sent this quick note:

Dear Mr.______:

The last week of March I submitted the essay "___________." The essay has been in review for thirteen weeks, going on fourteen. I'm writing to ask about where we are in the process.

Sincerely,

Josh Gunn

I was both annoyed and amused by the response I received today by the editorial assistant. In part, I think the response is a "form" letter, but one can't be sure:

Josh Gunn,

Considering the demands of peer review and the responsibilities of our reviewers, it is difficult to estimate a time frame. The editorial team, Dr. ______, the reviewers and I, try our best to expedite the process. Your manuscript is currently under review and we expect a response soon. You will be informed of the next steps when the manuscript returns from peer review.

Thank you for your correspondence. We look forward to the reviewer's response. If you have any other questions, do not hesitate to contact us.

Sincerley [sic],

Editorial Assistant

As we all know, it's very difficult to discern tone in emails, and in messages like the above it's very easy to project unintended meanings. This assistant is trying to nice, meeting me halfway, but clear to stop-short of an apologetic tone. Even so, I read the first sentence a number of times, and I confess I'm at a loss to discern what it means: "Considering the demands of peer review and the responsibilities of our reviewers, it is difficult to estimate a time frame." Seriously: what does this mean?

Given the facts (14 weeks in review), I think the most straightforward interpretation is simply that the reviewers are late in reviewing the manuscript. I cannot imagine an editor telling reviewers, "you have five months to review this manuscript"---that would be absurd. So it stands to reason such a message tacitly acknowledges something. But, you know, what is that something?

Well, for one thing, the sentence asking me to "consider the demands of review" and the "responsibilities of our reviewers" positions me as someone who is not a reviewer, or who does not regularly review for scholarly publication. I often consider the demands of review---those demands are timeliness and not holding up some assistant professor who is trying to keep his or her job. I routinely decline invitations to review manuscripts when I know I cannot get the essay back in three or four weeks time. I'm also quite familiar with the responsibilities of reviewers: I have to balance service obligations at school, teaching, my own research, and domestic life stuff with my reviewing duties. The "image of thought" deployed in the first sentence is, of course, one of hierarchy; it presumes I do not understand what it is to be a scholar who reviews for journals on a regular basis.

I can easily forgive such assumptions. What I cannot forgive, and what irritates me to no end, is that other reviewers do not respect what I do: timeliness. We're all effing busy. I can throw a rock in my department office and I'll hit a person who is up to his or her eyeballs in "busy." We need some sort of discipline-wide talking-to about the importance of fair and timely blind review. We need to educate folks that, if they agree to review an article, that agreement entails timeliness. If we cannot agree to be timely for each other, then as a field we're shooting ourselves in the feet. If there's one thing worse than rejection, it's waiting a year for it.

it's synth-pop friday!

NCA will not reduce or waive high reprint fees

Music: Drive-By Truckers: The Big To-Do (2010)

While it seems the Betsy De-Bach-le has gone dormant, this doesn't mean the Executive Director of my professional organization, the National Communication Association, refrains from bad judgment, and this time over for-profit reprint fees. Some years ago, NCA made a Faustian bargain with Taylor & Francis publishers (most known stateside for their Routledge outfit), who have significantly changed the publication game in the field.

Under T&F, authors of essays published in NCAs journals have lost many of the courtesy perks they used to receive (such as free issues of the journal one published in). I've also tangled quite a bit with T&F over copyright and have been tremendously frustrated: Mirko and I worked with Apple, Inc., for almost three months to secure the rights for reprinting an iPod advertisement, only to have it fall through because T&F kept asking for ever more clearances; the deal-breaker was T&F's insistence Apple, Inc. give them rights to reprint the advertisement for perpetuity in any of their "collections" and what not. Working with Apple was complicated, but after tracking down the model, her agency, Apple's art people, the graphic artists, and Apple HQ (all of whom signed off on the reprint) to have T&F ask for one more hurdle (and thus a new round of signatures with all these people) was infuriating, to say the least.

But I digress. My friend and colleague Chuck Morris is helping to sponsor a bill that corrects Executive Director's decision to let T&F hike reprint/copyright fees to an untenable level (that is, her decision not to exercise the power of her office to keep these rates reasonable). I think one could argue for higher fees were my field bigger and much more endowed than it currently is; our conference is 6,000-8,000 tops---and the field isn't that much larger. If we were political science, higher fees could be sustained. But "readers" or edited collections drawn from NCA journal articles for rhetoric in communication studies are very targeted, and in general, there's no profit to be made. Hiking reprint fees is just going to make it that much harder to get edited collections and readers drawn from the field.

So, this is a long-winded way to say I fully support Chuck's resolution, which will be introduced at the next legislative assembly. I encourage readers to take a look at the resolution. If you find yourself agreeing with the spirit of the resolution, I urge you to sign your support in the fields found at the bottom of the webpage.

UT's racist past

Music: A Sunny Day in Glasgow: Ashes Grammar (2009)

In my film class this week I am screening Berry Gordy's Mahogany (1975), which stars one-time girlfriend (and unwilling pawn) Diana Ross. We're watching the film to illustrate Jane Gaine's critique of Laura Mulvey's conception of the gaze. Gaine's critique of Mulvey centers on psychoanalysis, which she argues misdirects attention from what she calls "the right to look": the "gaze" of the film is raced, and an overly narrow focus on the gender of gazing fails to properly reckon with the way in which the film constructs the "right to look" as "white." What Gaines helps us to see is how the film is very much a Berry Gordy manifesto for how to make it in the white world of Hollywood (a model built on his formula for making it in the white world of music): see like white people do. Despite the film's (and Gordy's) best intentions, the film ends up capitulating to the hegemonic aesthetic it aims to critique; the critique of sexism is something of a smoke-screen for reestablishing white supremacy.

Jung be praised (think "synchronicity" here), our classroom discussion about "white ways of seeing" is happening at the same time that a controversy on my campus is breaking: there is a push to rename an all-male dormitory on campus because its namesake was a ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan. According to a well-documented paper by former UT law professor Thomas Russell that came to light last March, Simkins Hall Dormitory is named after William Steward Simkins, a Klan organizer and Civil War veteran who taught at UT for some thirty years. He "rode" with the KKK, participated in violence against freed slaves, and apparently gave speeches lauding this fact until his death in 1929. There's no doubt he was a white supremacist. Long after his death, the dormitory was graced with his name in 1954, a rhetorical gesture to be sure (this was the same year of the Brown vs. Board of education ruling).

Until Russell's paper, Simkins' memory seemed to fade from the radar. Today it was the top story on a number of the newscasts. What's so odd about this is that, apparently, there is resistance to changing the name of the dorm!

Given the left-leaning habits of most readers of this blog, I don't need to rehearse the reasons for renaming the dorm. The reasons for not doing so are the following:

• "To rename the building would set a huge precedent---one that could end up costing a great deal of money and time," says Leslie Blair, an Associate Director of Communications with UT's Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. "We feel that a better use of our time and money would be to continue to recruit and to provide programs that support more students, faculty, and staff from populations underrepresented at the University and to further a climate of inclusiveness and cultural diversity that looks to the future instead of dwelling on the past."
• It will be a "moot issue," at some point, says the director of DDCE Gregory Vincent, since the dorm will be torn down at some point in the future (though no one knows when that point is).
• We just erected a statue of Barbara Jordan.
• Erasing Simkin's name erases his racism, and it is therefore better to leave it.
• We need to preserve the memory of the fight for state's rights and the war of northern aggression.
• THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN!

The last two reasons, of course, are unstated in the press, but I assure you they inform the resistance to any name change. Such was the ideology informing the gifts of one of the earliest regents and most generous benefactors to the university, George W. Littlefield. Littlefield was responsible for creating the Littlefield Memorial Gateway on the UT quad, a beautiful stretch of south campus lined with statues of confederate leaders (helmed by none other than Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and George Washington).

What's astonishing to me is that this is even an issue. Apparently the Board of Regents put together a committee to mull it over and advance a recommendation at some future date, and the University President called for two "public forums" to discuss it. Of course, at the first public forum the overwhelming message from speakers was that the name should go; even so, there's another "public forum" scheduled for the issue on June 28th.

The argument offered by the university division of diversity against renaming the building seems to be about expenses. This is also surprising. UT routinely renames buildings for the right price (the "C" building in my complex was just renamed), so I cannot imagine why this is financial issue. Now, I admit I don't understand what financial issues such these pragmatics really entail, but one has to ask: what "financial" price does the university risk defending Simpkins' name? Indeed, given just about any controversial issue this is often a good question, since it shifts the ground of value back from the dollar to the symbolic; money is often a smokescreen in public discussions of symbolic controversy.

That said, the pragmatic argument in this case is morally abhorrent.

Changing the name doesn't "erase" history; rather, it forces the university administration (and the rest of us) to face the very material ways in which racism is institutionally built-into the very edifice of the university grounds. Littlefield's vision of the university was that it should be the intellectual legacy of the confederacy; defeated, he reasoned the supremacist legacy of the South would nevertheless be safeguarded by Texas' première ivory (or limestone) tower (and, yup, we got a tower: "two turntables and a microphone!").

I confess I am largely ignorant of my employer's racist past, although I am aware of it. When I screened Birth of a Nation to my class, I mentioned Littlefield's Memorial Gateway was a concrete embodiment of the film's ideology; many of my students seemed surprised. Rarely have they taken the time to read the plaques affixed to the statues on campus. I'm glad the controversy over Simkins Hall is bringing all of this to light---to the consciousness of students, faculty, staff, and alumni. That said, I'm just slack jawed: does it really take an advisory council and public forums to conclude the obvious? I daresay more money has been spent staging a dialogue on the gesture than simply changing the name. Perhaps, in the end, the dialogue is good and productive; perhaps the silver lining in all of this is the awareness the controversy is causing.

a summer job I will never forget

Music: Chad Kettering: Into the Infinite (2008)

It probably comes as no surprise I am an NPR junkie, and I often turn on the radio at home (the portable shortwave with the extendable antenna) instead of watch television as I go about housework, cooking, and so forth. Tonight as I was driving to meet friends for a wedding rehearsal dinner, All Things Considered was featuring a segment on summer jobs. This segment is part of a summer-long series in which various folks share with listeners their memories and impressions of their most "memorable" summer jobs. Listening to a woman describe a summer working with her father on a construction team, I was (unexpectedly) confronted with memories of my own most memorable summer job. Stuck in slowly moving, bumper-to-bumper traffic, my memories started to drown out the radio, which in retrospect is strange (how can a mental image muffle an open ear?) and, I reckon, is something of a testament to the intensity of my own experience (or narcissism?). I thought I would share, in this space, memories of my most profound summer job and invite readers to share memories of theirs. Tis the season, after all.

Most of my summer jobs, beginning (well, during) high school were at Little Caesars Pizza in Snellville, Georgia, and I have many fond memories of working there. Many of my best buds worked there---which is how I ended up making pizzas for minimum wage---and I fondly recall that is where I developed my life-long affection for The Fields of Nephilim (blasted from a cassette on a "boom box" covered in flour). But these fond memories are nothing compared to the shock of working for the CDC in Atlanta in the summer of 1996. I don't recall how I landed the gig, but in my senior year of college I snagged a paid internship with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which was somehow coordinated with my degree in Communication Studies from the George Washington University.

I took the internship just after college graduation; I knew at the time I went off to the center that I was accepted as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, but I also knew that the internship was related to CDC recruitment somehow. After working there for some weeks I figured out they were creating a "communications" branch (basically, a PR office) and I was brought in under an existing program yet "trying out" for recruitment for this new PR branch. As an intern, I was assigned to two different divisions who "shared" me for grunt work: "Informational Technology" and "Surveillance." These divisions or departments were sub-units of the Division of HIV/AIDS in the CDC.

When I began my job, I was pretty much under the leadership of "Surveillance." This division was responsible for "morbidity reports"---basically, keeping tabs on the AIDS epidemic. I was also shared by "Information Technology," which is CDC-speak for public relations. Over the course of the summer I was shifted from one division to the other. And this was because I am a sensitive person, and someone was sensitive to that.

"Surveillance" in the division of HIV/AIDS consisted of a number of researchers, and their staff, who were devoted to keeping tabs on how the virus was spreading and, of course, this meant how many people were dying. In the mid-90s, this division was very active. As an intern, I was assigned the task of what I call "dead logging." And this is where my strongest memories are forged. When AIDS started to present itself in the 1980s, it was strongly correlated with blood transfusions and hemophiliacs. It was initially dubbed "hemophiliac related disorder" or variants of this until "gays" became the scapegoat and "AIDS" was adopted as the term. By the time I was working at the CDC, "AIDS" was the term and the virus was better understood. When I arrived at the CDC, it was time to "incinerate" files related to the beginning of the epidemic (the federal government stipulates CDC medical files must be kept for at least seven years). My job as an intern was to go through boxes upon boxes of files related to the early AIDS breakout, log their contents, and thereby, prepare them for incineration.

These boxes contained materials that you wouldn't imagine. I expected medical documents---and that expectation was confirmed. For the most part, the files consisted of medical charts and notes. They featured the medical histories of folks---mostly men---who were dead. My job was to log the contents of each file and medical history on a manifest so that the files could be incinerated. But what I did not expect to find (and I think my supervisors didn't realize would be there) were hand-written letters by loved-ones, press clippings, and all sorts of personal ephemera (get-well cards, photographs, and so on). When I logged the stuff, I couldn't help but read the personal letters and clippings. I vividly recall reading the letters of a woman whose husband was dying from AIDS (apparently as a result of a blood transfusion), and she was so grateful for the doctors who were trying to save her partner's life. I remember many days going through these boxes of files, reading the files, and crying. It's hard to recount these letters and memories (I'm tearing up writing about them now), I can just say that as a young person of 23 years of age, I didn't have the frame to digest what I was reading. I don't think I was supposed to read the contents of the files; I was supposed to log what I found and move on. But I couldn't help myself---I read the stuff, and went home to my folk's house upset and depressed.

After many weeks of "dead logging," my supervisors stopped asking me to do this and moved me on to "Information Technology," which was the division responsible for responding to requests that resulted from the Freedom of Information Act. Basically, I'd mail photocopied articles about AIDS/HIV research to various folks in response to requests (many from politicians) about the transmission of the HIV virus. This was a much easier job---it didn't make me cry, for example. We often joked and laughed, in fact, in the IT office about the stupidity of the requests (a running joke in the office concerned a certain, well known senator who requested information about the transmission of HIV in dried semen; this senator has since died).

To this day, I don't know if I was moved to the PR wing because someone sensed the dead-logging upset me or not. I distinctly remember NOT telling my supervisors that the task upset me, but I suspect it's hard to hide wet eyes. Nevertheless, this summer job had a profound impact on me for all sorts of reasons. One of those impacts was that I was caused to confront my own queerness and its relation to social sanction and the health industry. To openly identify as queer in the 90s risked serious health insurance troubles. At that time, the CDC was advising anonymous AIDS testing; to openly test for AIDS risked having your health insurance company drop you. I remember that the CDC was behind the fight against this (and my respect for Planned Parenthood was forged then; PP does tests, to this day, anonymously because of this). Another of those impacts was that I decided, then and there, that my career must be dedicated to something I believe in---something that I could be compassionate about. I was interning in a office full of people who passionately believed in their work, who believed they were working for a cause. The scientists and doctors in my building were visibly dedicated to ending the pain of AIDS---they had a mission, a passion. They were committed to a cause. The workplace was electric with the feeling of a misson. It's not something that I can describe in words; it's simply that you felt, when you walked in the office door, that you were doing something important, and that this something had nothing to do with money. I loved that feeling.

I've worked in many environments; working in the CDC was different. I was surrounded by people who believed they were working for the common good. This is hard to explain or translate, but I suspect the "feeling" I had working at the CDC that summer is similar to the feeling folks have who go into medicine, or veterinary science, and so on. Ending suffering is the goal. I want to believe that same spirit informs the decision I made to dedicate my life to education and scholarship. I often feel the same sense of mission walking on a university campus. I rue the day that feeling no longer clobbers me. I still feel it walking into a classroom. Once that feeling leaves me, I should do something else.

it's it-always-sounds-better-in-the-club-last-night Friday!

on (not) befriending students on crackbook

Music: R.E.M.: Reckoning (1984)

Today a Facebook friend alerted a number of us that the National Communication Association, one of my professional groups, advanced a press release today. What's usual about the press release is that, first, it's advocating something tacitly political, and second, what it advocates is wrong. Titled, "Why College Students Should 'Friend' Their Instructors on Facebook," the press release sets forth the following argument, based on the research of Jospeh Mazer: instructors should "allow" their students to "friend" them because it makes them more personable and approachable. Aside from the fact the press release is very different from the title of the press release (the title seems to address students, but it's really an exhortation to the teacher), the problem I have with such advocacy is that it puts teachers in danger and asks them to be teachers 24/7 (as if we are not already, but . . . ). The press release warns that

Instructors should be consistent with their self-disclosure on Facebook and their teaching style in the classroom. Instructors who exhibit a relaxed personality on their profiles, via informal photographs and entertaining messages, yet operate the classroom in a strict manner may violate student expectations, resulting in negative effects on students.

In other words, "friending" your students as a teacher widens the zone of professional surveillance, demanding that teachers be "on" not only at the university, but at home in their pajamas dorking around on the computer. As if working 80 hour weeks is not enough.

I have all sorts of trouble (surprise!) with this PR gesture from an organization that I pay hundreds of dollars a year to represent my professional interests. These sort into two piles: representation of the field and the argument. Let me address each in turn.

To my knowledge, NCA is not in the regular habit of advancing press releases, so to have this one brought to my attention invites, perhaps, undue scrutiny. Nevertheless, from a rhetorical vantage it makes sense to want to address a topic like social networking, which is very much on the public screen. Even so, I would have preferred something to be highlighted as "research" that is---er----less obvious. "Being aware of these common interests [music and movie interests] may help students feel more comfortable approaching their instructors with questions or problems." You don't say? I suspect if I took my students out for beer after class it would have much the same effect. I confess I'm rather underwhelmed with this "research"---as I am a host of the work in my field that "discovers" the obvious. I recognize such a statement tempts the heretical (but c'mon, we know there's a lot of stuff out there that numericizes the obvious). I'm only observing that the tail is wagging the dog here, and there is a way to dog PR that actually contributes something new by drawing on innovative and creative social scientific research about the InterTubes. My colleague Jorge Peña, for example, is doing some pretty insightful and fascinating research on impression formation and stereotypes in online environments that taps into the same public screen interests, but which does not conclude the obvious.

Second, and more important to me, is the assumptions of the argument advanced. One of them concerns labor: the release assumes that social interaction with students is not "labor," when in fact it is an extension of work. Interacting with students is what we are presumably paid to do---and the press release is advocating that teachers interact with their students on Facebook---to extend the mission of the classroom into social space. The "warning" of the press release about maintaining the continuity of one's teaching persona between the classroom and Facebook is, basically, asking teachers to continue their "work" into the social domain.

Another problem: such an entreaty contributes to the widening net of surveillance and policing. We have already discussed the "surveillance" problem that Facebook poses to educators on this blog, so I won't retread that discussion. The gist of the immediate retort is that befriending students (as opposed to former students, or recently graduated students) opens teachers to surveillance that extends their professional responsibilities into the gray zone of the social. I can think of at least three instances when a supervisor has commented about a Facebook interaction in a way that bears on professional life (not only mine, but that of others). Nevertheless, instead of focusing on the dangers Facebook friending poses to instructors, let's grant the pedagological thrust behind NCA's news release: student learning and the educational experience.

As an educator in today's environment of "reality television," "sexting," and surveillance-as-entertainment, the boundary separating one's public and professional self from the private and social self is increasingly blurred. If I can borrow an argument from John Sloop, what this boundary-blurring (the hallmark of social networking) ends up doing is rendering the machinations of power invisible. If there's one thing about Geert Hofstede's conception of "power distance" that rings true to the classroom, it's that a degree of perceived inequality contributes to learning, and being aware of that inequality or "distance" between teacher and student is the function of grading, judgment, and so forth. I've been teaching for fourteen years now, and if there's one thing I have learned it's that you cannot be your student's buddy. You can be friendly, approachable, and so forth, but adopting the persona of a buddy can really backfire in the classroom setting---and the danger is proportional to age-distance. The closer you are to your student's age, the more dangerous "buddydom" can be.

When I first started teaching, I recall a teaching evaluation that read, in all caps, something like "SMOKE 'EM UP DUDE!" At the time I thought it was funny, but in retrospect I wonder if this student took anything from the class other than it was a "good time." And I recall some of my most difficult problem students were the one's who asserted we were "equals" and thus I should give them a break. This is especially problematic with psychotic students---something the NCA cited study does not take into account. I need only refer to this unfortunate email I received from a student some years ago, an email that discloses a perceived equality and therefore absence of boundary. Because the student presumed (in his/her deluded mind) that we were equals, and because s/he did not get the grade s/he thought s/he deserved, a letter was sent to the dean and untold problems ensued. Boundary trouble.

What Mazer's research and NCA's press release seem to be promoting is dangerous, especially if one takes note of the disciplinary issues that plague secondary education. Middle- and high schools (at least of the public variety) are now doing the work of parenting, which involves a lot of "no" and "thou shalt not." Talk to any high school teacher and they'll tell you less and less time is spent on teaching and more and more on discipline. Discipline is not abuse (although it can be abusive), and is often wrongly characterized as such ("Another Brick in the Wall"). Rather, discipline often concerns public comportment and the discernment of boundaries. I'm not talking about spanking or being a hard-ass; by discipline I simply mean maintaining a boundary between teacher and student, a boundary that the "buddy" disposition blurs. In college, thankfully, most students have embodied what is and is not appropriate to say and do in the classroom, and I thank the secondary educators for that. But I've noticed that things are changing as adolescence is extending into the 20s---"delayed adolescence" is becoming the norm. It seems to me "friending" students only contributes to the larger, social problem of deferred adulthood. Being an adult, seems to me, is a recognition of boundaries.

Of course, every student is different. Some are more mature than others, and those with strong boundary recognition may be perfectly cool with Facebook friending. As a general rule, however, I think it's best not to be friends on facebook with undergraduates. I would double-underscore this point for graduate student teachers: the rewards may be enhanced learning for SOME students, but the penalty can be much worse.

And to flip back to the problem this poses from the professor's perspective: we can be tempted to cross boundaries too. When an undergraduate attempts to "friend" me on Facebook, I always send the same message (which is something I now "cut-and-paste"). It says, basically, I'm flattered to be asked and I'll gladly add them as a friend after they are graduated and their relationship to the university is officially ended. Most students, once they graduate, don't follow-up on this. I think part of the allure of friending professors has something to do with the leveling of power distance---that is a powerful compulsion. In any event, recently I "friended" an undergraduate who just graduated and who did "follow up" on the friend request. I couldn't resist exploring his/her "profile" photos. You can guess what I found, but suffice it to say this student's alluring photos could appear in a glossy magazine designed to titillate. I couldn't imagine teaching a class having just seen a student in the front row in underwear the night before. Boundaries people. Boundaries.

presidential intimacies

Music: Alice in Chains: Black Gives Way to Blue (2009) Something wasn't quite right about the president's speech tonight.

I'm not talking about the vagueries of abstract initiatives---though, as a former Louisiana resident attuned to some of the local issues, I should mention that I fail to see how decades of the government's neglect of coastal erosion is now somehow going to be fixed; the damage has been done, and the tar is just the icing of insult. I'm also not talking about the way in which environmental crisis and war have been conflated, as if "we Americans" only understand the grunt and battle cry (the metaphors were really strained at best, and FDR's context was way, way, different---sorry speechwriters; you missed the boat rig). What I found bothersome about the speech tonight was what struck me as an inappropriate intimacy, an uninvited sense of "let me level with you." Initially my thinking was that the camera was too close, but after some cybersleuthing I decided that was wrong. I think, however, I figured it out.

This summer I'm teaching a kind of crash-course in film theory, so I've been thinking a lot about shots and narrative and so forth, and perhaps that's why I was hypersensitive this evening watching Obama's speech. I kept feeling the shot was too close, that there wasn't enough distance between the spectator (me) and the body of the president. In the grammar of film and television, a "close up" signifies intimacy and familiarity, and most of us in the West are taught (as we grow up watching screens) that the closer the shot is, the more intimate we are supposed to feel. A close-up of a face "means" that we are given a window into the mind and feelings of the person in the frame. A president giving a speech from the Oval Office already signifies a certain degree of intimacy. When televised speeches started in the Oval Office, the general "grammar" was to start with a wide shot to establish where the president was, and then to slowly zoom in. Over the decades that zoom has gotten progressively tighter, and any cursory searches on YouTube shows that this is the case. The zooming seemed to stop---where many address norms seem to---with The Buck, Ronald Reagan. Here's a screen shot on the left from his farewell address, where his body is shown from the chest up. Notably, his hands are not visible. Technically, we're somewhere in the zone between a "middle shot" and a "close up," a standard that I suspect was established by evening news broadcasts.

Because I felt Obama was all up in my grill, I supposed that for some reason the shots were tighter than those Reagan helped to establish as the norm. Yet, if you look at this shot frozen from tonight's speech, it's still a middle-to-close shot, again, focusing on the chest. This fact made me curious, so I started YouTubing recent presidential speeches from the Oval Office to see what it was that was making me take notice. I looked up Bush. Here's a shot:

Hmm. It's a little tighter in, but it is also still in keeping with the norms established in the 1980s. So then I checked out Clinton:

Strange. We still have the mid-to-close shot. So what is it? What's the thing that made Obama seem odd coming into my living room tonight?

As I watched the speech on my local PBS affiliate---still operating under the assumption that the shot was closer than the norm---I flipped to other networks to see how closely Obama was framed. Every network had Obama approximately the same size, which suggests, of course, the details of the shot were standardized and negotiated. The only difference I noticed between networks concerned color and sound. So what's different than these other presidents' Oval Office addresses?

As my colleague Jürgen Streeck might be quick to say: it's the hands, stupid.

If you watch a 30-second snip of the speech, you'll see something that---I think---is a little different from past Oval Office speeches. One sees the traditional wide shot and then a gradual zoom towards the president's face. However, the camera stops short---it does not go as far in as the camera has done in the past, leaving Obama's hands in view:

Obama's hands are doing a lot of the talking here, which signifies, I think, an attempt to deliver an affectively arresting message. If you couple the body-dance with the rather vague and detail-scarce content of the speech itself, you get a stronger sense of what the president and his handlers were attempting to achieve: a feeling of assurance, of earnestness, that our government is doing it's best to address the issue. This rhetoric is more visual than verbal, and decidedly so. The hands are doing a lot of the rhetorical labor here, and I daresay they are given more prominence of place than the English language.

Here's where my ignorance comes into play: I subscribed to cable television for the first time in my life about a year ago. My cable television experiences were limited to visits with friends and family or hotel rooms until relatively recently. I did have "free" cable for a stint in graduate school, but that was 1996-1998 roughly (and not my fault; I just tried it and lo, I had it). Regardless, it's been a decade since I've had cable television regularly in my home.

I mention my cable defloration because one thing I have noticed about "news" on cable is the use of hands, and the now chummy tone newscasters seem to adopt. On CNN, for example, the newscasters (I would need to be forced at gunpoint to call them journalists) gesticulate wildly with their hands---overly so, it seems. It's been an unnerving experience, in a way, because I grew up watching "talking heads" (er, and listening to them, since the band totally rules) deliver the news. Even today, the major television networks do not include wild hand gestures—especially my staple, the PBS News Hour. Newscasters are shot from the chest up, and if they use their hands to deliver the news, it's done minimally. This is not the case on CNN (and I suspect other cable news broadcasts).

What I'm noticing is that the president of the United States is giving an address to the nation in the "cable style," for lack of a better term. Because gesture studies is not something I am well versed in at all, I'm not sure what to make of this style, I'm not sure how to make sense of this new form of body-language in the presidency. I'm relatively certain, however, it's "newish" and it's an approach, conceived in cable news, that the Obama camp is deliberately adopting. I'm also thinking it's something rhetoric scholars should start tapping our colleagues in gesture studies to make better sense of.

My personal, knee-jerk reaction is that the new, gestural presidential intimacy is unfair or cheap in some way---that it's, well, that it's manipulative. But to invoke the Talking Heads once again, "same as it ever was." Even so: methinks Obama gestures too much.

That final line was the perfect ending to a blog entry, but I have to go all led zep and add a twofold coda to kill the dramatic closer: (a) I have a lurking suspicion that part of my dis-ease with the Obama framing has something to do with the fact that I have an old, cathode-ray television and that this address was broadcast with wide-screen, flat television displays in mind (which says something about class, too, but that's another post); and (b) the meeting place of those of us in rhetorical studies interested in the body and the visual and the sonorous is tone.