Laura Thain's blog

Mitt Romney and the (Mormon?) Rhetoric of Philanthropy

R-Money

Image Credit: Huffington Post

At issue from the moment Romney stuck his neck out as a Presidential hopeful,  his extraordinary personal wealth has become one of the primary issues covered by various news media as we march closer to the November election.  Epitomized best, perhaps, by a cleverly Photoshopped image that initially made rounds as a campaign gaff, “RMoney” has anything but hip associations—rather, it has inspired vast discussion about the rhetoric of prosperity and philanthropy in the midst of economic recession, both real and imagined. 

Gifs, gags, and digital nostalgia--the long wait for Breaking Bad season 5.2

breaking bad art project

Image Credit: Breaking Gifs

I simply cannot resist a good topical tumblr. Of course, the orienting rhetorical principle of tumblrs like textsfromhillary (inspired by a single Reuters photo of the Secretary of State checking her smartphone on a C-17) or geraldoinahoodie (created in response to Geraldo Rivera's comments on the Trayvon Martin case) is undoubtedly kairos, and, as we might expect, these sites are often abandoned as quickly as they are generated, leaving nothing but a flurry of self-referential entries that lose their meaning the further they become removed from their rhetorical moment. As the creators of textsfromhillary assert in their final post, "As far as memes go – it has gone as far as it can go. Is it really possible to top a submission from the Secretary herself?"

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