A few weeks ago, when Rachel Maddow released two pages of one of the president’s old tax returns, many people criticized her for waiting until the second segment of her show to get to the actual release; even Stephen Colbert did a full-on parody of Maddow’s on-air style on his CBS show. For those of us who watch Maddow’s show regularly, though — I don’t always agree with her, but she does have the best prime time news show out there right now (which may be…
Bill Clinton Tells Millennials They’re What’s Wrong With America, Only Hillary Can Fix It (inquisitr.com) The 2016 enthusiasm gap (politico.com) As the presidential primaries wind down here, a lot of pixels are being spilled over the similarities between the 2008 and 2016 Democratic nomination contests. A lot of Bernie Sanders supporters are complaining about the role that superdelegates play in the Democratic primary, and how the primary calendar being front-loaded with southern states makes it easy for more conservative Democrats like Hillary Clinton to take…
Parenting in the Age of Awfulness (wsj.com) Earlier this month I finished teaching three more classes, and even after ten years of teaching I still have a hard time dealing with the emotional rollercoaster ride of those last classes. The classes tend to be celebratory on their surface — especially when I can tell students that they’ll never have to worry about taking another English class for the rest of their lives — but all the time I’m sitting there and smiling, a lot of conflicting…
Trigger Warnings, Safe Spaces, And The College Mental Health Crisis Media Coverage Ignores (Media Matters for America) Officer in viral classroom takedown fired (All In with Chris Hayes) One of the main influences in both my teaching philosophy and teaching performance is the bad experiences I’ve had as a student with horrible teachers and unscrupulous administrators. Although I had a number of advantages over the years that most people aren’t lucky enough to get, I also went through things that no human being — and…
Legislators unhappy with [University of Tennessee]’s gender neutral pronoun push (knoxblogs.com) Duke freshmen object to Alison Bechdel’s ‘pornographic’ graphic memoir, ‘Fun Home’ (latimes.com) About three years ago, right after starting a new teaching position, I was faced with a crisis of conscience. As a composition instructor my focus is on teaching the arts of rhetoric and argument, but I have to handle some grammar in there as well, and I was having an increasingly difficult time dealing with the fact that I was being expected…