5/20/2014

The Commencement Speech They Need To Hear

In light of the various protests by the perpetually offended few and the disinvitations proffered by a number of institutions of higher learning, maybe it's time for some of those wackos to get a lesson in real life. If all they ever hear are those who they agree with they will never learn anything new and they will be living within a fragile cocoon that, when shattered, will leave them incapable of dealing with the harsh realities of life.

Perhaps the best person to give these willfully ignorant and close-minded jerks a lesson is P.J O'Rourke who has offered his services as a commencement speaker. Here's a small preview of what he would tell the graduating students of one college – Rutgers - whose administration has shown to have no backbone by not telling the local variety of the perpetually offended to “piss off”.

I hear Condoleezza Rice stood you up. You may think it was because about 50 students—.09 percent of your student body—held a “sit-in” at the university president’s office to protest the selection of Secretary Rice as commencement speaker. You may think it was because a few of your faculty—stale flakes from the crust of the turkey pot pie that was the New Left—threatened a “teach-in” to protest the selection of Secretary Rice.

“Sit-in”? “Teach-in”? What century is this?

It’s shame she was busy. You might have heard something useful from a person who grew up poor in Jim Crow Alabama. Who lost a friend and playmate in 1963 when white supremacists bombed Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Who became an accomplished concert pianist before she tuned her ear to the more dissonant chords of international relations.

O'Rourke goes on to list Rice's achievements, most of which the graduating Class of 2014 could only dream of accomplishing, and even then not nearly as well as she. Yet somehow she's undesirable as a commencement speaker. At one point she was probably the most powerful woman on the entire frickin' planet, but these know-nothing ass-wipes decided she wasn't good enough because they disagreed with some of her beliefs. This gives the rest of us yet another example of the morally bankrupt and murderous ideology being spoon-fed to gullible students without the means to understand they're being lied to by people who do not have their best interests at heart.

In any case, Read The Whole Thing.