In an apparent move to cut costs, the Stanford PWR program has combined several first-year courses for the Winter Quarter. Administrators realized Monday that they could merge the Rhetoric of Deception, the Rhetoric of the Insult, and the Rhetoric of Outrage into a single course focusing on the FOX News channel.
Director of PWR Programming, Andrea Lunsford, stated that “FOX pundits such as Bill O’ Reilly and Glenn Beck have a magical ability to deceive, insult, and outrage viewers. Students in this class will gain enormous insight into using these techniques to manipulate their audiences.”
According the class syllabus, “students will write essays that make provocative and inherently false arguments appear accurate and professional.”
Conservative scholars at the Hoover Institute all vied for the prestigious teaching position, however News Corporation President Rupert Murdoch was ultimately given the honor of teaching the class. Murdoch said that “Stanford is one of the most innovative campuses in the country, and students must understand that the newest trend in media is using biased coverage to both swing elections and profit from gullible audiences.”
After hearing about this class, Condoleezza Rice asked the administration if she could teach a course titled “The Rhetoric of Interrogation.”
