"But here’s the good news. You fix this thing, you’re the next greatest generation, people...you’re not gonna have much trouble surpassing my generation. If you end up getting your picture taken next to a naked guy pile of enemy prisoners and don’t give the thumbs up you’ve outdid us.Transcript of the whole thing here. Pretty damn good, up there with Will Ferrell's Class Day speech at Harvard, the urban legend of a speech everyone wishes that Kurt Vonnegut delivered at MIT, and Conan O'Brien's Harvard Commencement Speech in 2000....And the last thing I want to address is the idea that somehow this new generation is not as prepared for the sacrifice and the tenacity that will be needed in the difficult times ahead. I have not found this generation to be cynical or apathetic or selfish. They are as strong and as decent as any people that I have met. And I will say this, on my way down here I stopped at Bethesda Naval, and when you talk to the young kids that are there that have just been back from Iraq and Afghanistan, you don’t have the worry about the future that you hear from so many that are not a part of this generation but judging it from above.
And the other thing….that I will say is, when I spoke earlier about the world being broke, I was somewhat being facetious, because every generation has their challenge. And things change rapidly, and life gets better in an instant.
I was in New York on 9-11 when the towers came down. I lived 14 blocks from the twin towers. And when they came down, I thought that the world had ended. And I remember walking around in a daze for weeks. And Mayor Guiliani had said to the city, “You’ve got to get back to normal. We’ve got to show that things can change and get back to what they were.”
And one day I was coming out of my building, and on my stoop, was a man who was crouched over, and he appeared to be in deep thought. And as I got closer to him I realized, he was playing with himself. And that’s when I thought, “You know what, we’re gonna be OK.”
I wish my graduation speaker was witty and/or amusing. Frankly, I can't even remember who he was, and it's not because it was so long ago. I think it was the U.S. Secretary of Defense or something like that (Dick Cheney?). He was dull as hell and attracted a few rows of protetesters in one corner of the stadium. My friends and I spent the whole time playing commencement speech bingo and flipping Mah Joong characters we had drawn and pasted to the tops of our graduation caps. After several character flips, we formed the largest possible winning hand in Mah Joong on our caps at which point we stood up on our chairs and screamed as a salute to our parents in the crowd. I don't think the speaker was pleased.
UPDATE: Ken, who remembers more about my life than I do, reminds me that my Commencement speaker was then Sec'y of Defense William Perry.
Posted by eugene at May 20, 2004 1:22 AM