Bright College Daze

Well, I thought my razor was dull until I heard his speech. And that reminds me of a story that's so dirty I'm ashamed to think of it myself. -- Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho Marx) in Horse Feathers

Per CNN, some 200 demonstrating students peacefully protested the anticipated commencement address by Vice President Cheney at Brigham Young University. Meanwhile, counter-protesters -- and what’s a good protest without some counter-protesters to help lure the media? – quietly collected some 400 signatures on a letter of thanks to the vice president. Peacefully? Quietly? Well, BYU ain’t exactly Berkeley when it comes to protests, after all. Then again, come to think of it, neither is Berkeley these days.

Say what you will about FOX News’s conservative slant, here’s how CNN described BYU: “a conservative school owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Well, yes, in the same sense, I suppose, that Georgetown is a liberal school owned by the Roman Catholic Church. Still, one rarely reads or hears such context provided by the MSM in such cases, or is it just me? And is there anyone who didn’t know that Brigham Young is a Mormon school or, as such, a tad less left leaning than, oh, say, Michigan or Yale? (Note to Eli arson majors: next time, kids, at least have the common courtesy to burn your own damned American flags, huh?)

Anyway, commencement speech season is soon upon us and landing a big name commencement speaker is almost as prestigious and competitive among big name universities as seeing who can reject the most high school valedictorians. Ordinarily, a mere vice president isn’t considered nearly as big a catch as, say, a film star; but, hey, it’s Cheney, you know? Besides, political commencement speeches actually can be entertaining. At my own graduation many years ago, then Chief Justice Warren Burger gave a delicious “Law and Order” speech (no, not about the TV show) in the midst of the Watergate crisis of his greatest fan, Richard Nixon. Oh, the irony was dripping faster than the beads of sweat under our silly medieval robes that hot spring afternoon, I tell you.

Generally, though, aside from the rare funny ones, commencement speeches are a waste of time. The speaker is there primarily to bask in his own ego and pick up a worthless degree he didn’t earn (not unlike many of the other degree recipients, come to think of it), while the audience is comprised of gleeful parents busy thinking about not writing any more tuition checks, faculty members busy thinking about all the research and writing they hope to get done that summer and graduating seniors wondering where the best parties will be after its all over.

In fact, the best thing that can be said about the typical commencement speech is that it isn’t the most boring part of the ceremony. That dubious honor belongs to the endless procession of graduates walking up to receive what purports to be their diplomas but turns out to be their very first request from the development office for an alumni contribution. Grass grows faster than they hand those things out, and more interestingly, too.

So cheer up, unhappy BYU students. Cheney will be back to his undisclosed location before you can say Joseph Smith. To paraphrase a far better (and shorter) speech than you will hear at commencement, you will little note, nor long remember what is said that day, and before you know it you’ll be free to begin your lives. Commencement is, after all, not an ending but a beginning and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.