rhetoriclee - April 7, 2020I’m fixing to spoil season 7 of Brooklyn Nine-Nine by revealing the twist at the end of season 6. The spoiler is only a little bit though. My focus is on a side-story featuring Sergeant Terry Jeffords, played by the hunky and hilarious real-life Terry Crews, who stumbles onto perhaps…
rhetoriclee - March 31, 2020It is no small thing to be a self-proclaimed lover of the f-word. American culture has always thrived on the puritan and even though we hear often the cliche that, “we need civility more today now than ever,” the truth is that there has always been a pressure to perform…
rhetoriclee - March 24, 2020I am going to hit you with a little bit of pop culture but we’re gonna go non-fiction. Because I really want to dig into the harm that cliches do. Not any particular cliche but a general way of thinking and speaking that is derivative, trite, hackneyed, platitudinal, whatever synonym…
rhetoriclee - March 16, 2020In the last blog post, I critiqued the cliched use of “challenging people” in motivational culture; I challenge you to bullet journal; I challenge you to get a coffee enema; I challenge you to just, like, be better. We are continuing in that vein, investigating another of these motivational cliches:…
rhetoriclee - March 11, 2020I am not a “challenge” person. I don’t sign up to do races. I don’t put my name in those “win a blah blah” business card buckets at lunch counters. When my brother and I were kids, you could bet him about anything and he’d do it. “Bet you can’t…
If Ben Stein and the Kardashians had a baby that were raised by Janeane Garofalo in a recording studio, you’d have RhetoricLee Speaking. Listen every Tuesday for a whirlwind tour of banality across pop culture, political controversy, and whatever was on Netflix at 3 am. Watch the video trailer!
rhetoriclee - March 10, 2020I love a good script. And I mean the word script two senses. First, I love when someone else takes the time to write a good script–the students in my public speaking classes, the creators of movies, podcast hosts–because I can tell on the backend how much more I appreciate…
rhetoriclee - February 12, 2020Let us begin with a quote from William Shakespeare: Love me or hate me, both are in my favor…If you love me, I’ll always be in your heart…If you hate me, I’ll always be in your mind. Ugh…Love that, right? It’s so edgy. You do something shitty or just plain…
rhetoriclee - February 9, 2020In the notorious opening monologue from the 80s classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Bueller charms the pants of his audience with a well-packaged cliche: “believe in yourself.” I’m not saying don’t believe in yourself; I’m not saying that you shouldn’t encourage a friend to believe in themselves. What I am…
