Summer Vacation! (Ha!)

Like so many faculty, I’m grading my Spring semester final exams, preparing to submit final grades, and looking forward to Summer.  The uninitiated often refer to this upcoming time as “vacation,” but Summer at the university is only a vacation if you’re a student.  

The professor hustle doesn’t end because May rolls around.  It just changes.  This is particularly true for an untenured professor—which I am.  Sure, I'll travel a bit, go to some conferences, and see family, but there’s shit to do every day, all summer.  Every. Day. All. Summer. 

As an assistant professor working the four class per semester teaching load typical of a teaching university (as compared to research universities where the teaching load could be half or even less), the Summer is the time of year where I can really make some headway into my research and writing.  

During the Fall and Spring semesters, I try like hell to work and write through the semester so that I can maintain a consistent level of productivity, but I usually fall back into incredibly condensed and predictable writing bursts around conference/publication deadlines (like mid-October [ECA] and mid-March [NCA]). I know this is a bad habit—and one that makes me resent writing more than I actually do—and I know that I should write all the time. Every semester, I promise myself that I’m going to finally get it together and work out a healthy writing plan.  I succeed less than I’d like to admit.  Which is to say, I have never succeeded.  Like the student in the back of lecture swiping through Tinder, I fail every semester.  

I have a whiteboard in my office with checklists of things that have to get done.  At the end of this term, it had three columns: grading, writing, and administrative.  Each column has around ten things on it.  The whole damn board is full.  By the end of Spring, the grading was almost done, the administrative stuff was about half done, and one of the writing goals was crossed off.  One.  Because I can’t get my through-the-semester writing shit together, I start every summer already behind.  

Today is the first day of my Summer.  Today is the day I make my writing plan, the day I look at my now mostly open calendar and dream about crossing items off the writing section of the white board, the day I lie to myself about how long it takes to write well (or even how long it takes to write crap).

My writing goals for the summer include an essay revision for a major journal, a book chapter revision for an edited collection, finishing the manuscript of my own book, and revising two essays for journal submission.  Oh, and I need to generate some new writing that will sustain me for the next few years.  No big deal. I figure I’ll knock those out by the end of the month and then have a nice relaxing Summer vacation.

The reality is that I’m probably good for two, maybe three, of those projects.  Last Summer, I kept a record of how often and how much I wrote (professor/grad student friends, this is worth doing).  The contrast between what I did then and what I hope to do now is telling.

My goals this summer will probably require the following writing (in words)

1.     Essay Revision: 3K

2.    Chapter Revision: 4K (current draft is really shitty; Like Cleveland Browns first round picks shitty)

3.    Book Revision: 25K

4.   Submission: 5K

5.    Submission 2: 5K

6.   New stuff: 5K

Total Writing Goal: 47K

Last Summer (June, July, and August), I wrote ~22k words.  If I’m generous and give myself credit for 6K for May (I wasn’t tracking yet) that means I generated ~28K words last summer (May-August).  The difference between my actual productivity last Summer and my goals this Summer is 19K words.  That’s almost an entire extra Summer of writing.  To get caught up on my writing projects, I just need to kick ass all Summer and then kick more ass during a bonus Summer (a pre-tenure sabbatical would nice right about now).

When I look at what I actually wrote—projects worked on/completed (or not) rather than words on pages—the comparison is even more troubling.  I worked on four different research projects last summer: I revised—quite heavily—an essay for submission to a journal, I revised one chapter in my book,  I wrote a chapter for somebody else’s book, and I wrote a book review.  

I submitted the essay revision after working on it for about two months.  I revised, but never really finished the book chapter for about two months. I wrote the chapter for the edited collection in about a month—admittedly, it was based on an essay I wrote in grad school and conferenced but hadn’t gotten around to cleaning up yet so I wasn’t starting from scratch. I finished reading the book to review and drafted my review by the end of summer, but didn’t submit the actual review until September.

I worked on four projects for four months and submitted two of them.  I made progress on the other projects—and I had no illusions that I’d finish my book—but I only actually submitted two things.  

And it’s not like I wasn’t writing last Summer.  I wrote almost every day.  I felt like I was hellaproductive.  Still, I only managed to finish half of the projects I worked on.  Four months of mostly uninterrupted writing time and all I came out with was two measly submissions.  Two. 15k of those 28k words actually went out to reviewers (and onto my CV).  The notion that I’m somehow going to turn out six project this year is ridiculous.

Writing is hard, y’all.

To my fellow academic-writers heading into Summer vacation:  if your goal is to catch up, change it. The reality of Summer is that you never catch up.  Instead, make it your goal to find ways to keep up with your writing.  Take whatever you’re working on, make a list, and then cross out two (or, if your list looks like mine, cross out four).  Find ways to live with your writing.  And, more importantly, find ways to write every day, all summer.

The Job Market Flashback Part 1

In my current context, I'm lucky enough to be the coordinator of our MA in Communication Studies program.  That means that I live in my email and burn away hours putting out little administrative fires.  It also means that I get to spend quite a bit of time mentoring graduate students and having career planning conversations.  This is one of the most rewarding aspects of being a professor.  At least, it is for me.

Having somehow managed to continue getting renewed through my probationary period as a tenure-track faculty member, I've reached a point in my career where my former students--many of whom have gone on to pursue PhDs at great universities--are preparing to face the pain and suffering of the academic job market.  As a result, I've been retelling my experiences as a job seeker and reflecting on the brutality of the job market quite a bit recently with a little more critical (and emotional) distance than I've ever been afforded.  

In this series of job market flashbacks, I'll be recounting my two cycles as a job candidate in hopes of providing a little perspective on the experience.  These posts are probably more for me--as a way of working through the psychological trauma of the market--as they are for anyone else, but I like to tell myself that they're helping refine the stories and glean some lessons that I can pass on to my students.  

These posts are not lists of practical advice.  Those exist elsewhere. I love me some www.theprofessorisin.com (Dr. Kelsky's book by the same name is also really good), and there's always an article or two in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the market for advice seekers.  I encourage you to seek them out.

In this post, I reflect on the "first wave" of the job market cycle--from around August 1 until the National Communication Association annual convention in November--from my first run at the market.

During my first run at the market,  I deftly avoided writing a dissertation (a skill I would later lament), helped my spouse discern an important shift in her career, moved into a new house, lived, for a time, in a chicken coop (seriously), and faced the very real concern that I would not be employed the following year and would have to start paying off my student loans with IOUs and book reviews (that’s a joke, see, because book reviews are basically worthless even as academic currency). Oh, and we welcomed our daughter into the family without any real sense of how much money it costs to raise a child.

Much to the chagrin of my letter writers and references, I sent out more than sixty applications in my first year on the job market.  I applied for anything and everything that I was remotely qualified for and somethings for which I was remarkably unqualified.  Research positions, teaching positions, fetal positions, you name it, I sent them my CV. The result of my effort was a handful of phone interviews, a smaller handful of campus invitations, and three job offers.

In the first “wave” of activity, I conducted one pre-conference phone interview with a small public university in the South for a position that was a tenure-track teaching position loosely categorized as “speech communication.”  The interview was mostly okay from my standpoint, but was nothing to write home about.  We probably spent more time talking about how one of the interviewers was a home brewer because the university was in a dry county than we did talking about my teaching experiences and philosophies.  I was not invited to campus.  Fun fact: one of the search committee members was also on the job market and scooped up one of the better jobs on the West Coast.  I don’t know who they hired or what criteria they used, but it wasn’t me (and given the number of Visiting Professorships in that department, I’m thankful to have dodged that bullet).

That year’s National Communication Association Convention was particularly challenging for me.  I remember feeling the oppressive weight of the job market in full effect while I prepped my presentations, endured the meat market otherwise known as the job fair, and gritted my teeth through the always awkward performance of “academic” that the conference entails.  

It was at this convention that I started responding to over-the-top academic posturing--people trying really hard to be really smart... you know it when you see it--with my best Hulk Hogan double bicep flex pose (no t-shirts were harmed in the making of this ridicule).  I usually, though not always, do this out of the sightline of the guilty party.  To this day, one of my favorite conference memories is dishing about the conference at a pizza shop with my friends only to occasionally break out the “gun show” as we mocked the trite performances of the really smart people that we’d witnessed earlier that day. We were in stitches all night.  As the night wore on, it got to the point where the stories were so predictable that we were laughing about the idea of "posturing" before the mock-flexing even began.  In my memory, there was also a spit take or two.  In hindsight, I wasn't the only one there on the job market.  We were probably just laughing to keep from crying.

(Doesn't he look smart???)

I was invited for only one interview at that convention.  In fact, I’ve only been interviewed once at our annual academic fête.  My interview experience at the NCA in DC was, to this day, the worst interview I’ve ever endured.  The actual conversation was pretty standard, but the context of the interview was soul-crushing.  I learned during my fifteen-minute window that I hadn’t earned the interview by making anyone’s shortlist.  The interview wasn’t about me at all.  Instead, the guy across the table from me had driven down to DC from his university up the East Coast to interview literally everyone who had applied for the position.  When it came time for me to ask questions in the interview, I asked—having completely given up on getting the gig—how many interviews he was doing at the convention. He confessed that he’d spent two days conducting a series of fifteen-minute “interviews” like the one I’d just suffered though.

I never had a shot at that job—which was another generalist tenure-track teaching position at a public university. In hindsight, I should have seen the signs for what they were.  When I arrived a few minutes before my interview—which was to be held at a table outside of the coffee shop in the convention lobby—I noted that another candidate was still finishing up her chat with the interviewer.  About two questions into my interview, I caught the interviewer looking over my shoulder.  Stealing a glance behind me, I saw the next sucker sitting on the floor against the wall waiting to take the seat I was keeping warm.  The conversation may have been hollow and disappointing, but the interview itself was inhumane.  I arrived for the interview feeling as though I’d accomplished something—making the shortlist—and left realizing that I’d sunk even more time into another failed application that went nowhere.  I learned in the interview that even though the position was advertised for a “Communication” professor, the department was really looking for a “Journalism” professor. Surprising as this may be to the uninitiated, these are not the same thing.  What a waste of everyone’s time.

The DC conference was also my first experience with the conference job fair/meat market.  Every year, a number of departments send representatives to sit awkwardly behind tables with position descriptions while eager graduate students and desperate job seekers mill about asking awkward questions like, “where the f@$% is XXX State University?” or exclaiming, “I didn’t even know XXX had a university!” All this while standing in line waiting to hand over business cards and CVs before exchanging smiles and handshakes in order to feel some small measure of control over their otherwise terrifyingly uncertain futures.  

At the job fair, I chatted with maybe four or five departments, but mostly only to verify that no one was looking for a worthless scholar like me (the imposter syndrome is real). I also patiently waited to talk with a department representative from a small liberal arts college in my home state for nearly 30 minutes as the job fair was closing because the job seeker who’d arrived a step or two ahead of me held court at the table while I stood to the side imagining what would happen if he were suddenly and inexplicably crushed by an Acme anvil falling from the sky.  

I felt a strange mixture of pity and rage as this clearly desperate job seeker regaled the poor woman behind the table with a litany of excuses about an extensive gap in his employment history.  Apparently, before he blocked my chances of having any kind of meaningful conversation with the department representative at the job fair, he’d been an asshole in China or Russia or France or somewhere else overseas and felt the need to talk about it until the people around him couldn’t hear anything else through the haze of pretention. When he finally recognized that the job fair had ended and the other exhibitors were closing up shop, my time at the table was about thirty seconds. It went something like this:

“Oh, you study rhetoric? That’s cool. I study rhetoric!  We’re not hiring a rhetorician.”  

Good times.

I was never so jaded about the academy as I was in those few moments after I walked out of the job fair.

Part 2 of this flashback will find its way to a blog near you soon... like this one.  This blog right here.  

Reach Out and Touch Race!

I teach my rhetoric and popular culture seminar by working through a series of concepts on one day and then applying those concepts to an example or series of examples the next day. Over the last couple of days, we’ve been talking about race and culture. After introducing some critical race studies and whiteness studies concepts, I usually then have the class work through a few Lenny Bruce bits that were the basis of a chapter I wrote with Chad Nelson. Since I’m pretty familiar with the arguments in the chapter (having written them), I use the lesson as a chance to give my students a peek behind the curtain into my critical process.

This semester, I’ve supplemented the discussion with Eric King Watts’ essay, “Postracial Fantasies, Zombies, and Blackness.” I intended to use Watts’ critique of the zombie Obama shooting targets as a text to work through on day two (along with the Lenny Bruce bits), but, to my surprise, the theoretical conversation about postracism paid more dividends then the case study (not that Watt’s criticism is somehow less valuable than his lit review. Quite the contrary, it’s really good. My pedagogical skill was the problem, not the criticism).

Of note, Watts—following Coates and Dyson—emphasizes the idea that postracial discourses (denials of race and racism… think, “I don’t see race”) often work by creating a logical progression from race to racism. That is, because race is a thing so too is racism. Or, the social construction of race creates racism. This is a pretty common way of thinking about race and leads it to an apparently simple solution: if we just stop talking about race then racism will wither on the vine. If we stop creating categories then we will stop treating people like shit. Would that it was so. For some reason, even though I encounter legions of bright-eyed undergraduates who insist that they “don’t even think about race” or “don’t see color” racism is still evident (see, for instance, any newsmedia website comment section… or your TwitFaceGram feed).

The reality, and Watts demonstrates this clearly, is the other way around: racism begets race. The social construction of race was always carried out at the behest of racism (and colonialism, classism, etc.). The concept race supports the structures of racism. Without racism, we wouldn’t need race (and make no mistake, culture needs race).[1] Without racism, race would lose both its oppressive capacity and its potential to help critics understand racism (and culture). Without racism, race would be empty, meaningless, and, essentially, unnecessary.

I’m struck by this remarkably simple, conceptual reversal because it solves the problem of the “personal racist” that comes up whenever I discuss race with my students. The “personal racist” is a lot like the “personal Jesus”—the one who you invite into your heart to solve all of the problems of sin (as though the divine requires an invitation—we tend to think pretty highly of ourselves, eh?). Unlike the “personal Jesus,” the “personal racist” is the Klansman in your heart that you’ve expelled because, surely, you aren’t a racist (if you were, you’d have invited that bastard in, burnt a cross on your neighbor’s lawn, and joined a militia on the Southern Border, right?). 

The problem, for me, is that because folks have clearly disavowed their “personal racist” they often fail to see the complexities of racism and race in contemporary culture (see also, me; I fail in this very same way all the time). The “personal racist” puts race before racism by internalizing racism as a personal, individual problem rather than a societal, cultural problem that affects not just me (personally), but all of us together.

I can either challenge, support, or accept racism. Disavowing my “personal racist,” doesn’t challenge racism, at least not at the cultural/societal level. Instead, challenging my “personal racist” permits me to feel good about my relationship to the racism that persists all around me that I have accepted (and allows me to ignore my complacence). It’s only when I forget about my self-serving “personal racist” for a minute that I can start to see how racism is keeping me from myself, my culture, and my neighbor.

Not being (a) racist isn’t good enough and it never was. We must be anti­-racist. The only choice is to challenge racism.

My colleagues of color and fellow scholars of race know this already. I haven’t said anything new here, but I’m still coming to grips with my complacence. Feel free to join me.

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[1]Of course, we don’t need culture as we know it... which is kind of the point, isn’t it?

All Writing is Returning to Writing (or Blogging...)

I want to get my blog back on the level.  In order to do that, I intend to write a few shorter pieces based on my research (and research that I’ll never actually finish).  I also will be writing a few pieces about writing, research, and teaching. This one is about writing.

Over the last year or so, I’ve spent a fair bit of time reading about writing.  I’ve read books by academics about how to write more than you already do.  I’ve read books by nonfiction authors about how to approach writing like it’s a fucking job (because, if you’re a professor, it is).  I’ve read books by fiction writers about finding “flow” or “the zone” or “focus” or whatever actual productivity feels like.

These books contain multitudes.  Very repetitive multitudes.  There comes a point in the research process where scholars indicate that they have achieved saturation.  I’m not sure I’m there on the writing books, but I’m awfully close.  Here is one of the most important lessons that I’ve encountered across each of these formats:  drafts do different things.

In Bird by Bird, Ann Lamott urges her reader to write “shitty first drafts.”  She writes about getting words on the page and then letting your brain go to work tinkering and fixing and making it less shitty.  The purpose of the first draft is to be a big steaming pile of shit—but it has to be on the page.  

This is freeing in a way, because it helps me deal with my inner critic who insists that that last line was derivative (and that repeating the word that is redundant and clunky).  “It’s okay,” I tell my inner-asshole, “I’ll fix it later.  Right now, I have to get to the next idea.”  Once the ideas are on the page, they can be outlined, analyzed, and revised.  Until that time, they’re just floating around in your head and not doing anyone any good (including you).

In addition to my reading about writing meta-crisis, I’ve also been reading a bunch of Neil Gaiman books[1]—and my InstaTwitFace knows it.  It also knows that I’m an educator and fascinated by learning and self-actualization.  Take these two bits of information, shake them up, ad a twist of social media big brother, and I keep seeing ads for Neil Gaiman’s Master Class video series (for the incredibly low price of $90 you too can be an award-winning author of incredibly deep, creative fiction, graphic novels, and, an episode of Dr. Who or two).  Of course, since the algorithm thinks I should watch the ad, I have—and if I had $90 and time (which is significantly harder to come by), I’d probably watch the videos.  In the ad, Gaiman talks about how the first draft is about figuring out what you’re writing and that the second draft is about acting like you knew it all along. 

This too can be quite freeing.  

I harp on my students about writing “ah ha” arguments—the ones where they write 1000 words of meandering nonsense before arriving at something that resembles an argument and then, convinced of their genius, stop writing a sentence or so later, hit submit, wait a few minutes and then email me to inquire about why they have yet to be notified of their perfect score for the assignment.  The solution to the “ah ha” problem is almost always to move the last paragraph to the beginning and rewrite everything that follows in order to defend rather than find the “ah ha.”  

It sounds so easy, doesn’t it?  It does—at least until you try to do it. Rewriting something word by word, sentence by sentence, idea by idea is hard.  Really hard.

The first draft is your brain crapping on the page.  The second one requires sifting through the crap to figure out what’s worth writing and why it’s worth writing.

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[1]Big fan of The Ocean at the End of Lane.  American Gods is as good as advertised, but was a little slow/drawn out.  Anansi Boys, so far, has been quite fun.  I'm looking forward to digging into Good Omens soon. Art Matters is a must read for a humanist/artist/critic-type.

The GOP Horror Picture Show

What does this guy,

have to do with this guy? 
 

 

I think the answer has something to do with “genres”--the types or categories of literature, film, music, and so on.

In film, genres essentially evolve in the same way.  There is a period of innovation in which the standards for the genre are set.  Next, the genre enjoys a period of replication where the genre becomes a powerful resource for filmic invention and a series of similar films flood the market.  Eventually, the genre enters a period of self-reflexivity in which films begin to “talk back” to the generic conventions that constrain them.  And finally, self-reflexivity gives way to full blown parody, spoof, and send-up. 

Okay, that last little bit isn’t in keeping with classical genre theory, but I think works anyway.  Also, I study comedy, so you knew I was going there eventually, right?

Here’s an example from the horror genre—because I like horror films and because that is how Sharon Croft explained genre when I took film studies at Capital University.

1. Innovation—(1974) Texas Chainsaw Massacre & (1978) Halloween get the slasher genre going.
2. Replication or “Can I get a sequel?”—(1980) Friday the 13^th and (1984) A Nightmare on Elm Street define the slasher genre and generate franchises that still haven’t quite gone away.
3. Self-reflexivity—(1996) Scream begins a slasher franchise that is keenly aware of its participation in the genre and occasionally references not only itself, but also other films in the genre.
4.  Parody—(2000) Scary Movie gets Ghost Face high and makes a pile of money mocking the slasher genre and horror films in general.
5. Rebirth—(2004) Saw picks up the serial killing slasher, adds a creepy puppet, and earns its way into the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful horror franchise in Hollywood history.

So what does this have to do with the Republican nominee for president?

Rhetorical critics, like the one writing this post that you are miraculously still reading, are at times quite taken with the idea of genre.  Speeches are often classified as to how they respond to various occasions, how they function, or which form or forms they prefer.[1]  Beyond speeches, Glenn Richardson has also noted how the genres of popular culture—like uh, I don’t know, horror films—impress themselves upon other kinds of messages (notably political advertisements) in order to convey complex meanings in apparently simple packages.  Essentially, these genres are powerful sources for inventing persuasive messages.  Appealing to a genre activates already existing tendencies in audiences to like or dislike particular kinds of messages and triggers emotions associated with the messages in the genre.  This persuasive potential isn’t lost on the power hungry and politically ambitious.

Given the overwhelming reliance on fear appeals (“Make America Safe Again”) during the Republican National Committee’s quadrennial spectacular scare-a-thon,[2] I find it no small leap to suggest that contemporary conservative rhetoric is particularly drawn to the signs and symbols of the horror genre.  Of course, fear appeals in conservative politics aren’t new (and, I should add, aren’t limited only to conservatives—the DNC had plenty of Donald Trump centered fear appeals), but characterizing Republican-talk in terms of the horror genre might be helpful in understanding the evolution of conservative discourse that created a space where the Donald could take up the standard for the GOP in the general election somewhere other than on The Simpsons.

Think about it.

Genres begin with innovation.  For the sake of argument, let’s assume that contemporary conservative discourse begins with Reagan.  Which is to say, Reagan is the Leatherface of Republican rhetoric, which is also to say, he was terrifying in ways that his rhetorical descendants never really were/are (neoliberalism is a thing, people). 

Bush Sr., then, takes up Reagan’s already existing genre and functions as replication of a well established way of relating to the world.  Consider him Jason to Reagan’s Leatherface—a burgeoning franchise that looks a lot like the original, but is a little more predictable.

Speaking of franchises, Bush part Deux takes the genre out of replication—he wasn’t really like his dad or the Reagan—and into self-reflexivity. His rhetorical reliance on social conservatism (of compassionate conservatism, as his campaigns preferred) was certainly unorthodox, but thanks in no small part to some genetic engineering and his penchant for being photographed near flags, he looked like a president and he occasionally did things that reminded us of his Republican predecessors (like, you know, invade Iraq).  Exchanging the hockey mask for a ghost face, the result (murder of innocents) was the same, but the genre appeared to be reaching its limits and collapsing back in on itself.

And here we are.  Republican slasher film rhetoric appears primed to make its last final generic evolution.  If Trump is the new (orange-tinged) face of conservatism, perhaps his rhetoric is best understood as a generic parody.  It all sounds familiar, comprised of the same old scare tactics and fear appeals of Reagan era rhetoric and its replicants, but it’s hard to take too seriously, almost like everything he says is accompanied by a wink and a nod.  In fact, his incredible reliance on catchphrases, slogans, and talking points—without any of the argumentation—makes it seem almost as though he’s mocking Republicans rather than rallying them.  His fear appeals are ridiculous, laughable, and reprehensible.  

But that’s exactly why they’re appealing.  The horror audience gets a double pleasure from parody because it at once supplies the scare-tactics that they so enjoy, but also rewards them for getting the jokes and catching the references along the way.  Republicans like to be scared, so they tell the same ghost stories with many of the same characters (immigrants, communists, and Clintons), but with Trump they get to revel in the pleasures self-mockery and laughter as they celebrate and pay homage to their rhetorical legacy all the while preparing it for rebirth with a touch of torture porn.

The upshot, although liberal commentators and critics are at once terrified and tickled by the idea of a Trump nomination, his expression of the genre—though potentially lucrative and franchise worthy—isn’t likely to scare audiences enough to have staying power.  Trump’s Reagan/Bush parody isn’t scary enough to move his audience to the polls, but the Republican Jigsaw killer—whoever he is—will be something terrifying indeed.

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[1] For more, read something—anything—by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson.  Joshua Gunn, too, has a few good examples of rhetorical genre in press worth checking out.  Oh, and other people, too.  Just read stuff.  Reading is good for you.

[2] http://time.com/4419725/rnc-fear-violence/; http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/07/despair_and_fear_after_trump_at_the_rnc.html; http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/donald-trump-delivers-dark-fear-mongering-rnc-speech-w430397; http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-rnc-convention-trump-safety-huppke-20160718-story.html; http://www.salon.com/2016/07/19/fear_and_loathing_of_clinton_forget_melania_hillary_hating_took_center_stage_at_rncs_opening_night/;

Donald Trump, Dick Jokes, and a Politics without Shame

When I wrote my last post about the election, I didn’t think for a moment that Donald Trump would actually secure the incredible lead that he’s already secured in the Republican primary.  He is, by most counts, more than two-hundred delegates ahead of his nearest rival and a little less than five hundred delegates away from being the presumptive nominee.

He also defended the size of lil’ Trump tower in a March 3 debate after Marco Rubio, who has since suspended his campaign, commented on the size of Trump’s hands.

Trump’s response to Rubio’s comment—which also included a plea for serious policy debate—focused entirely on the threat to his manhood.  And of course, with typical braggadocio, Trump assured concerned Americans saying, “I guarantee there’s no problem”—and, really, why would he lie about such a thing?

The joke, which Rubio made a few days before the debate, was borrowed from an extended Trump take-down on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight (below).  John Oliver’s satirical brilliance aside, what I find interesting about the debate over Donald’s dick is that it exemplifies an interesting shift in our political culture.

A couple smarter people than me have commented on the changing face of contemporary politics in America.  Jeremy Engels argues that contemporary politics are marked by a rhetoric of “resentment” that seeks to divide a people against itself.  Susan Herbst similarly draws attention to the rise of incivility in public discourse as a strategy for forming and moving publics.[1] Resentment and incivility, though clearly present in our political discourse, just don’t explain dick jokes.

Although commonplace in late night programming, phallic humor usually doesn’t hold sway during official campaign events.  Rubio’s jab and Trump’s defense during the debate, however, took center stage as twitter exploded in response.  CNN even ran the following headline: “Donald Trump defends the size of his penis.”

The next day, Rubio was questioned about the joke on the Today Show (below).  And, like Trump, he defended his comments.  Was not ashamed for having “gone there” in his attempt to get back at a “rhetorical bully.”  He also admitted that he would even vote for Trump in the general election if he was the nominee—small hands notwithstanding.

The whole exchange, I think, points to a shift in political culture in terms of how we understand shame.  For Aristotle, shame was an emotion, a feeling and, therefore, among the available emotional appeals (pathos) in a speaker’s repertoire.[2]  To appeal to shame, for Aristotle, is an imagined loss of reputation or disgrace in the eyes of those whose opinion we should value.  This appeal, in the “shame-culture” of Ancient Greece was at once a tremendously powerful rhetorical weapon and an important component to Athenian democracy.

The exchange between Rubio and Trump and the fall-out on social and traditional media, demonstrates, I think, that ours is becoming a politics without shame.  Both Rubio’s joke and Trump’s defense of his nether regions were as shameless as discourses can be.  Both speakers, and the media that covered the exchange, disregarded the public’s opinion of the candidates and the campaigns.  When politics devolves into dick jokes, its shamelessness distracts the demos from its inevitable task of the vote. 

When our politics ignores shame our candidates can build platforms on insults, bigotry, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and fear.  When our politics lacks shame, it loses its humanity.  When our politics fails to respond to shame, it disregards its responsibility to the citizenry.  More the point, when our politicians are beyond shame, they flaunt their utter disregard for the voters they represent. 

Arguably, this last point isn’t all that surprising for the cynical reader (or, frankly, the cynical author).  Maybe our politics isn’t newly shameless.  Maybe politics is, by nature, immune to shame.  Maybe, but even so our political rhetoric tends feature at least the veneer of shame.  Even where a politician clearly does not care about his or her constituency, he or she must keep up appearances.  In a post-Trump political landscape, regard for the voter appears to be becoming less and less necessary for political success.

Regardless of the public’s perception, Rubio isn’t ashamed of his jokes at Trump’s expense and Trump isn’t ashamed of his proposed policies… as long as you think he’s bigger than “Little Marco.”

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[1] See Engel’s Politics of Resentment and Herbst Rude Democracy, respectively.

[2] Aristotle discusses shame in Nicomachean Ethics 4.9 and Rhetoric 2.6

Is Trump a Fool?

In his oft cited Attitudes Toward History, Kenneth Burke challenges critics to hold themselves to highest of standards.  Regardless of subject, “criticism,” he writes, “best be comic.”

Comic criticism requires an attitude of humility, sensitivity to irony and complexity, and, most of all, a commitment to finding fools where others see villains.  The comic critic fundamentally seeks to humanize his or her subject so that we might correct it, rather than eliminate it.  This challenge, at times, can be quite difficult.

Nowhere is this charge to stay comic more tested, at least for this critic, than when considering political discourse and campaign rhetoric.  Especially, when that rhetoric is “from the other side” of the political divide.[1]  Uncle Kenny (Burke) urges me to listen carefully to Ted Cruz and his rabid supporters judge them as fools.  For the Burkean critic, Cruz is a misguided, mistaken fool.  Not a villain, not a populist thug, not an opportunistic hate-monger, a fool.

This. Is. Hard.

But it get’s harder.  See, I probably don’t really have to take Ted Cruz too seriously.  He’ll never win anyway (though, even he probably thinks of himself as running for VP).  The Trumpster, on the other hand, really tries my comic patience.  Donald Trump, by most polling data, is the favorite for the GOP nomination.  I can laugh at Ted Cruz and, in some contexts, I can laugh at Donald Trump.  But the prospect of a Trump presidency is a little hard to stomach.

Trump fails most criteria for candidate viability, but his money, fundraising network, and the groundswell of popular support generated by his vitriol and bigotry just might dwarf the fact that he doesn’t “look presidential” or “know anything about foreign or domestic policy.”  By most measures, Trump is a terrible candidate, but that doesn’t seem to matter this early in the primary campaign.

What I find interesting about all of this, though, is that my trouble with Trump is that he’s hard to take seriously and it is precisely that fact that makes him hard to understand comically as any good Burkean critic should.  His persona—a strange blend of narcissism, used-car salesman, reality TV host, and spray tan—is such an exaggeration of humanity that I’m not sure who he really is (or if, he really is…).  And yet, I can’t seem to laugh at him—even when he’s on Saturday Night Live (see above, if only for the moment where Larry David calls him a racist and Trump doesn't deny it) or when he makes his GOP opponents look like idiots during a debate.  I just can’t find it in myself to think of Trump as a fool. 

The fool exists to be corrected for the betterment of society.  When Trump suggests, as he did on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert (see below), that he has “no apologies” for anyone he’s wronged or anything he’s done, it becomes evident that he is not interested in correction.  Trump is ridiculous, to be sure, and he wears the fool’s cap (or whatever that thing on his head is), but he is no fool. 

At the same time, however, his hyperbolic persona makes him hard to see as a hero or a villain—Burke’s tragic foil to the comic fool.  He isn’t easily distilled into the good bin or the evil bin.  Even as a person on the opposite side of the political divide, he doesn’t read as a threat, because I just can’t take him seriously.  I struggle to believe, for even just a minute, that he could actually be president.  If he’s a villain, he’s just not that scary.  I feel like if I just don’t pay attention that he’ll eventually just go away.  Even though the reality of the matter is that he has already made the shortlist for the conversation next November and shows no signs of backing down—or apologizing—anytime soon.

I’m not sure what all this means.  It is, however, an uncomfortable position for the comic critic.  I can’t seem to think of Trump as a fool or a villain.  I can’t get my head around it.  Maybe, that’s because he’s neither.  Even if you hate him, and plenty of folks do, he’s not serious enough—not really—to take comically and if he can’t be a fool, he can’t be a villain.  He’s a curious mix of equal parts terror and ridiculousness.  For this comic critic, Donald Trump is no fool.  He’s a clown.

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[1] Unsurprisingly, I, like so many academics, tend to lean left to way left.