Using Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to Learn Rhetoric

       Today, before class, I re-turned in my Contemporary Rhetoric class' take home test. It consisted of four essay questions and one speech to analyze. Our professor, he likes when we call him Chuck, was less than pleased with the grades we earned last week, and in the spirit of learning, he gave us suggestions and allowed us to make corrections on the tests. He allowed that test grade, and the new corrected test to be averaged to a better grade. THANK GOODNESS. Not that any of the ten of us made less than a C, he just knew we could do better. I like that he expects better from us.

        Many of the students in that class are Speech Communications majors, but a few of us are not and have never had an upper level speech class before. He makes the abstract ideas of language more easily accessible with tangible examples. Last week, we analyzed the starting points of arguments from television shows with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. I learn more from interacting with real life samples than I ever would reading from a textbook.

"We're talking to Jon Stewart, who was just lecturing us on our moral inferiority. Jon, you're bumming us out.”
-Tucker Carlson

Above is a quote from an episode of "Hardball" that we discussed to study the best and worst of rhetorical tools.