When we were kids in Texas, and we went to Mexico and ate something that we should not have eaten, we called the resulting diarrhea Montezuma’s revenge (people still do, of course). It has that authentic American racist feel to it, and it’s more than a little unfair to complain so cavalierly about a problem like dysentery, which is one of the scourges of poverty everywhere. Yet is also has a pointed irony, as if we recognized a kind of karma in genocide and colonialism.

The ongoing budget battles in the U.S., summarized in “State Lawmakers Seek More Say Over Colleges,” aren’t genocide, of course, but they do represent a kind of unfortunate political karma. Let’s call it…

I continue to be fascinated– fascinated in the way I am fascinated by a train wreck– at the ways that the political rhetoric of the now-revolutionary Arab North Africa echos or overlaps the political rhetoric of the political crisis in the American Midwest. Colonel Gaddafi says he will never step down or negotiate with protesters; Governor Walker says there can be no compromise over collective bargaining rights. The situations are vastly different, of course, which make the similarities all the more interesting.

Here in the U.S., and I suspect in North Africa, this is at least in part due to our use of what I call a sports or game rhetoric that makes no truth claims. The goal isn’t…

I have an Uncle who, to be polite, I consider an accurate barometer of ‘Big Lie’ conservative politics. If the right wing radio demagogues start a ‘Big Lie’ strategy, you can be sure my Uncle will soon repeat it. At one level, I want to believe that this is less a reflection of his honesty and more a reflection of the less than serious nature of his political thinking. It’s not really political rhetoric at all.

He’s not really trying to lie, in other words, he’s just treating politics as a kind of professional sport, and he’s talking trash about the opposition. It’s “sports rhetoric.” I have to say, though, that if it is true that he treats…

Sometimes when I listen to NPR’s Morning Edition in the mornings I get very frustrated. It’s a neo-commercial format, for one thing, rather than a true public service. (Another gift of Reaganomics.) The “sponsorships” (aka commercials) bug me most days; other days, its the weirdly self-congratulatory begging called “fund raising.” We are great! We are running out of money! You have to help!

In my case, it’s particularly galling that the University of Illinois, an organization with a budget in the hundreds of millions, has historically refused to fund its own public radio station. I find it galling when such an organization asks me, as a “member of the community” to give them money. This too is part…

Academics– and perhaps writers in general– tend to take the old bromide of the pen being mightier than the sword a little too literally. It’s as much of an aspiration as a truism, especially in the short term. Academics interested in writing and new communication technologies tend to overstated the already overstated. The revolution won’t happen online.

Texts are just not that powerful; at least, not yet. And the most communication technologies can do is facilitate communication. It’s a kind of power, but it’s also a very limited kind of power. As events in Egypt have shown, if the need is great, and enough people willing, there will be a revolution, however messy and complicated the results. Il ya…

I had a professor once who, in criticizing the manuscript that eventually became my book, commented that historians of universities always see a crisis somewhere. I think that’s true, and I think that writers always have to be aware that in their pursuit for persuasion they don’t fall into an unnecessary hyperbole. The “crisis” trope might get you attention, but it also can distort.

I also think that the last three decades have witnessed profound changes in employment practices and funding that warrant the notion of crisis. So I left the trope in my book. On the other hand, I think that it is true that the emergence of new communications technologies has far too often pushed or pulled writers…