{"id":231,"date":"2003-05-22T08:05:09","date_gmt":"2003-05-22T13:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=231"},"modified":"2003-05-22T08:05:09","modified_gmt":"2003-05-22T13:05:09","slug":"speeches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/05\/22\/speeches.html","title":{"rendered":"Speeches"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mini-brouhaha over Chris Hedges’ ponderous commencement speech<\/a> brought back a few memories.<\/p>\n

I attended all the graduation ceremonies during my four years at Pomona College<\/a>. I remember, a bit, three of them.<\/p>\n

One year we had Bill Bradley. I’d heard of him, vaguely, as a politician. I was surprised that it turned out he’d been a basketball player, too. I hope he was more exciting as a shooter than a speaker.<\/p>\n

My own graduation speech was given by Andrew Brimmer. He’d been on the Fed at one point, my Dad noted. He was a backup choice — the original speaker had to cancel, and Esther, his daughter, was in my graduating class. (She’d also been in my study group for Econ 101, and introduced me to the wonders of Evian.) I don’t recall any details of the speech, but it was moderately satisfying.<\/p>\n

What I remember most was the speech the year before, which would have been at the end of my junior year. Coretta Scott King was invited to speak, and she did so.<\/p>\n

Again, I don’t remember many of the details. But what I do remember was that it was not a graduation speech. It was an indictment of American society as racist, a speech I got the impression she’d given any number of times before. Oh, boy.<\/p>\n

If I was in that auditorium to hear Mrs. King speak, that would have been one thing. But I wasn’t. That wasn’t the point of the gathering. And that was the problem there, and with Chris Hedges.<\/p>\n

Here’s what a graduation speech is supposed to be — an acknowledgement, a rite of passage, an encouragement, even a challenge. But it’s meant to be directed to the graduates<\/i>, giving them some last bit of advice, some final word of wisdom, on how they can and should and will lead their lives<\/i>.<\/p>\n

It’s all about them, that day, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

A graduation speech is not, on the other hand, a generic potboiler, usable for any occasion, carrying on about a particular ideological worldview, lamenting X or extolling Y — except, and unless, it’s clear that the ideology, the threat of X or the promise of Y, are constantly and pertinently related to the graduating class of this year.<\/p>\n

It’s like a preacher who takes advantage of a wedding to launch into a diatribe about how everyone should become a fine Christian by his particular definition. It’s missing the point that folks don’t come to a wedding to hear the preacher. They’re there for the wedding.<\/i><\/p>\n

Similarly, folks don’t come to a graduation to hear the graduation speaker. Well, there may be a few in the audience, but by and large the vast majority are there to either (a) graduate, or (b) celebrate the graduation of someone they care about.<\/p>\n

Giving a long, dolorous, yet doubtless inspiring speech on racism in our society is a fine thing — at a dinner or event where people are coming to hear that sort of message. But if you don’t tie it back well to why everyone’s there in that auditorium (assuming that it’s not to hear you speak), then you’re off-message, inappropriate, improper — and even rude. In many ways, you’ll be counter-productive to your message, because you will stir up resentment toward it, through resentment of your actions.<\/p>\n

Ditto, and moreso, to a long, dolorous speech about the Evils of American Empire and The Military-Industrial-Political Complex. Unless you end every other paragraph with a “Get out there, kids, and do something about it,” you’re missing the fricking point of graduation<\/i>, and will likely (as in Mr Hedges’ case) find yourself booed and heckled and interrupted.<\/p>\n

A graduation is a party, a celebration. Four years we’ve been academic drudges. Sixteen, seventeen years we’ve been in school. Now, at least, we’re out of here! We can be fully treated as adults by society, and, hey, we can stay up as late as we want because we don’t have class in the morning! Woo-hoo! Yay, us!<\/i> Absconding with that celebration is rude, as much as if you went to someone’s birthday party, then gathered everyone up in another room and started talking to them about the perils of fluoridation in drinking water. The guests would be rightfully miffed, the guest of honor particularly so.<\/p>\n

I think Hedges’ speech <\/a>was pompous and wrongheaded. But even if he’d been up there reading verbatim out of the various screeds in this blog, it would have been improper. Because that’s not what a graduation speech is all about.<\/i> It’s not a matter of the Promoting of Civil Discourse, or the Need to Present Challenging Viewpoints. It’s rhetorically hijacking a celebration to grind an axe, and it’s wrong regardless of the axe to be ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The mini-brouhaha over Chris Hedges’ ponderous commencement speech brought back a few memories. I attended all the graduation ceremonies during my four years at Pomona College. I remember, a bit,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2469,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/06\/18\/peaceful_distur.html","url_meta":{"origin":231,"position":0},"title":"Peaceful disturbance of the peace?","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 18-Jun-02 10:03am","format":false,"excerpt":"When does disturbing the peace require an actual disturbance? 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I suspect this is an set of issues without bright line resolutions -- the existential need in college communities for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5931,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/06\/28\/academic_honest.html","url_meta":{"origin":231,"position":4},"title":"Academic honesty","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 28-Jun-04 8:46am","format":false,"excerpt":"I get personally irked by graduation speeches that get turned into a bully pulpit to discuss political postures outside the bounds of the academic, graduate, etc., experience. 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