E-Mail to English Instructors: Use Clinton/Fox News Interview To Slip Political Issues Into Class

Following is an e-mail send by an M.A. student and Teaching Assistant in the Marquette English Department to all instructors of First Year English.

Subject: Rockstar material for class activities

Everybody:

Somebody should figure out a way to use Clinton’s recent slam on Chris Wallace/FOX. I just saw it and I’m inspired to incorporate it into Unit 2 (multiple perspectives stuff), and then I think I may return to it in Unit 4 to emphasize elements of argument. It’s an amazing piece of work, a great way of slipping important political issues into class. Even if you’re not inclined to do anything with it, you should watch it anyway. Below is a link to a page that will give you a bunch of different sites where you can view it on the net. Actually, now that I think of it, it might be interesting not only to analyze the broadcast itself, but to analyze it as it has been framed by the various machines that are offered on this site.

Anyway...

http://tailrank.com/579668/Clinton-Fox-News-Preview

Drop me a line, anybody, if you end up doing something successful with this.

PeaceintheMiddleEast,
Melissa

The video clip is described as “Clinton’s recent slam on Chris Wallace/FOX” rather than “Clinton losing his cool” or “Clinton goes ballistic.”

So the apparent idea is to use it to attack Fox News.

This conclusion is supported by strongly leftist slant of the English Department. The faculty almost unanimously opposed returning to the “Warriors” nickname for Marquette athletic teams, a position that only very liberal people take.

Of course, this e-mail isn’t from some faculty member, and much less from some faculty member with any authority over Teaching Assistants. So it’s not any sort of English Department policy.

But it does show that at least one English instructor wants to “slip important political issues into class” and believes that her cohorts are interested in doing the same thing.