Front Page

When the President Attacks Private Citizens: Scapegoating Jemele Hill and the NFL Protesters

Jonathan M. SmithNovember 6, 2017

On September 11, 2017, ESPN employee and SportsCenter anchor Jemele Hill tweeted that "Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself wi...

Dissent

#Emptythepews: Responding to Trump and Evangelicalism

Matthew BoedySeptember 11, 2017

A University of South Florida faculty member named Christopher Stroop started an interesting and popular Twitter hashtag #emptythepews. See original thread here...

Religion Policy

Why is an evangelical megachurch podcast talking about ‘fake news’?

Matthew BoedyAugust 11, 2017

On June 27, many media watchers said the monologue given by White House reporter and Sentinel Newspapers Executive Editor Brian Karem was a turning point in the...

Media Criticism

Post-9/11 Terror Discourse Boomerangs Home

Heather Ashley HayesAugust 4, 2017

Donald Trump loves to say the words “radical Islamic extremism.” In the last months of the 2016 presidential campaign, he belted out this three-word rallying...

Terrorism & Middle East Policy

Donald Trump’s Speech to the National Boy Scout Jamboree

Citizen CriticsAugust 2, 2017

Last week, President Trump delivered a controversial speech to the Boy Scouts of America at their annual Jamboree. Below, a group of rhetoric scholars have writ...

Rhetoric Roundup

What is Fair about Campus Sexual Assault?

Stephanie MaddenJuly 28, 2017

Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos held meetings to discuss rolling back Obama-era policies designed to reduce campus sexual assaults. Controversiall...

Education Policy

The Role of the Church in Health Care

Matthew BoedyJuly 26, 2017

The Republican health care bill has been resurrected. So the debate surrounding health care will continue. One of the central questions in that debate is a reli...

Religion Policy

NRA’s Dana Loesch Ad

Citizen CriticsJuly 11, 2017

Recently, the NRA released a series of ads called Freedom’s Safest Place. In this roundup, Citizen Critics responds to spokeswoman Dana Loesch’s video...

Rhetoric Roundup

The Fourth of July is a Day to #Resist

Michael J. SteudemanJuly 3, 2017

Once again, stores are stocked with miniature flags and coal for grilling. Americans are breaking out picnic blankets and American flag-themed apparel. At the s...

Dissent

I’m Not Racist; I’m Nostalgic for Racial Terror: The Debate Over Confederate Monuments

George F. (Guy) McHendry Jr.June 6, 2017

For over a century a 16.5-foot-tall statue of Robert E. Lee towered over the city of New Orleans, standing as a symbol of the Confederate insurrection and vario...

Racial Justice

Great Television: Trump and the Morality of the Screen

Donald Trump and the Rhetoric of Honest Lying

DeVos speech shows contempt for the agency she heads