TheAgitator.com
Disappointment
Friday, June 4th, 2004Well, Neal Boortz’ commencement speech was a disappointment. He didn’t discuss politics much at all, and instead focused on the standard high school graduation topics: success, failure, adulthood – zzzzz. If anything, the Rabbis and other speakers were more political and more controversial than he was. A common theme among all the speakers was the importance of taking personal responsibility for one’s actions and not blaming other people for one’s failures. In a world of increasing nannyism, this was a refreshing change.
Boortz said that this was the first commencement speech he had ever given, and it showed. I think he is so used to speaking to hostile, politicized audiences that he just doesn’t know what to do with a friendly one. Boortz said that he had another speech planned, but one of the Rabbis basically said everything he intended to say, so he scrapped the canned one and make a new one up as he went along.
At first I thought he was just being cute, but immediately after saying this, he pulled out a stack of CDs in sleeves and handed one to each of the 22 graduates (it’s a very small school). Boortz said that this CD contained a copy of his real speech, and that the graduates should listen to it alone, and NOT in front of their parents or teachers. Phelps informs me that the CD most likely contained this speech, the transcript of which is available on his website. Given the context of the situation, I’m glad he didn’t insult his audience by delivering it.
[cross-posted at Catallarchy]
Just read the REAL speech, and though it may have been a little rough for a happy little graduation ceremony, it did seem like something everyone should have to read before starting out.
Yeah, the real speech is pretty good but I can’t even imagine the reactions it would have gotten from the people in attendance at the graduation.
That is a great speech, but no institution I’ve ever been to would have allowed a speech like that. :( Too bad the people who need to hear it the most, won’t ….
I thought the speech was great – wish I’d read it when I left boarding school. Instead, I took an extra 10 years to figure it out.
Shoving politics in the face of graduating seniors is inappropriate, rude and boorish.
It was inappropriate when done by Liberals and it is inappropriate when done by a Libertarian.
Kudos to Neal for not doing this, and shame on you for suggesting it.
I didn’t suggest that he should have shoved politics into the faces of graduating seniors; at least, not the kind of politics expressed in the posted commencement speech. Touching on specific political issues related to education (like school choice, for example) is not “shoving.” Focusing on the Iraq war, either pro or con, at a non-military school often is.
What a GREAT speech.
Aside from the trivial detail that some of the graduates are probably heading off to full-time jobs as teachers, Boortz leaves out that there’s plenty of group-think and governmental theft and bullying on the conservative side.
Yeah, what Nancy said.
For all Boortz’s left-bashing and circa-late-90′s-Leno-monologue-Clinton dick-jokes, he seems extraordinarily naive about conservatives in America today. It’s as though he was researching the left and the right from a completely blank slate; when he researched the left, he got all his info from the Rush Limbaugh archives, and when he researched the right, he got the info from the official GOP platform.
His definition of the left seems fairly accurate, but his definition of conservatives seems like it’s coming from some 9th-grader who has just discovered The Young Republicans Club at their high school. New flash, Neil: those “conservatives” that you speak so highly of, they have given us the most pork-bloated budget in history. The Bush Administration and his “Conservative” congress have given us the biggest spending spree since LBJ, and the biggest increase in nonmilitary discretionary spending in modern history. Meanwhile, their wiping their asses with the Bill of Rights, all in the name of some phony “War on Terra” (how do you have a war on an emotion?)
Neil is dead-on-balls-accurate through most of his speech, and he’s joyously insensitive, which made me laugh, just thinking about how those twitty professors would be squirming in their seats had he actually given such a speech. But he falls flat when he fails to equally criticise the right, and their newfound “compassionate conservatism”. That coulda been a GOP stump speech if I didn’t know better. Neil should stick to principles, not partisan politics, and he’d be fine.
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