Linda Bensel-Meyers, a professor of rhetoric, delivered something of a speech.
Most college educated Americans (whatever their degree subject) will have had the opportunity to take a course in rhetoric or something similar.
"It's a whole lot of debate and a whole lot of political rhetoric around something that neither side has an interest in doing," he said.
As it enters its final weeks, the 2012 election campaign is seeing the argument move from rhetoric to something crunchier: a debate about how to balance freedom, fairness, the rights of the individual and the responsibilities of the state.
For a time, Bannon was useful to him because he had the instincts of a political brawler and the ability to convert rabble-rousing rhetoric into something that could be presented to the gullible as a semi-coherent political philosophy.
Mid90s is a film in two distinct traditions: there is the rhetoric of something like the mid-90s film Kids, directed by Larry Clark and written by Harmony Korine – Korine has a knowingly contrived cameo here – or Gus Van Sant films such as Paranoid Park or Elephant.
It's a trigger moment for people who have long suspected that Britain is being run by a clique of toffs who consider themselves entitled to rule and whose "we're all in this together" rhetoric is something they snigger at in private.
There is no doubt that Aristotle himself regards his system of rhetoric as something useful, but the good purposes for which rhetoric is useful do not define the rhetorical capacity as such.
