paralepsis

It's been a long time since I've posted here, and especially in the Rhetoric of Now series, but I think this election season seems like a good time to return. The specific occasion for this post is the recent online activity of one Bruce W. Griffin , who tutored nutjob Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell a decade ago in a three-week course that O'Donnell falsely claimed was an Oxford University course. Griffin has defended the course, and O'Donnell's intelligence, both on his own blog and to the good folks at Talking Points Memo . He describes the coursework as follows: I required the papers to be written in disputatio format. This format demands that you furnish the three best reasons against your case before you are allowed to set forth your reasons for your case. So, for example, if you wanted to argue for communism, you needed to give the three best reasons in defense of capitalism before you could make your case for the merits of Ma