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, three of them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, giving them some last bit of advice, some final word of wisdom, on how they can and should and will lead their lives.
It’s all about them, that day, isn’t it?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, and will likely (as in Mr Hedges’ case) find yourself booed and heckled and interrupted.
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! 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.
I think Hedges’ speech 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. 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.
One of my many problems with this is, if Hedges had given an equally ponderous speech about our glorious democracy, how we were spreading it around the world, the courage of our wonderful President, and the joys of the liberated Iraqis, no one would have blown an air horn, no one would have rushed to turn off his microphone, no one would have shouted him down. And no one would be debating the appropriateness of his topic.
The rudeness was in the audience, not on the podium.
I disagree.
Oh, I suppose an uplifting and rah-rah speech on any topic would be less likely to draw protests than a downer-bummer-we-are-gripped-by-evil speech, but it would still generage grumbles at the very least. After four years of college (regardless of the ideological bent), the kids in the audience don’t want to be preached at, or taught. They want to be praised and lauded and, maybe, lightly challenged — but they want it to be about them.
Still, I suspect that if, for example, Secty Rumsfeld were somehow invited to speak at the UC Berkeley commencement, he wouldn’t be able to get Word One out of his mouth, regardless of what he was there to say.
I can’t remember the name of the argument-diverting tactic Adam used there, but the fact that the booed speaker was ideologically unfavorable to certain people (and therefore ideologically favorable to certain other people) doesn’t mean that what Hedges did wasn’t wrong. The point of what Dave is saying is that graduation speeches are not to be used as a grandstanding opportunity for the speaker’s own agendas.
I was very surprised at the actions of the audience and/or graudates. Not displeased, but surprised. As with the Dixie Chicks brouhaha, Mr. Hedges is entitled to voice his opinion. Thankfully, the graduates were more than willing to lend their opinions concerning him.
I think the only setting where Hedges comments would have been remotely appropriate would be at an military academy graduation.
Why, so they could have used their sidearms to shoot him? On second thought, not such a bad idea…
I wouldn’t call it an argument-diverting tactic. Adam challenged my premise that the reaction of the students was unlinked to the ideological content. I think an aspect of what he said was correct, insofar as an upbeat speech that didn’t focus on the students would be less likely to be protested than a down-beat one.
I think a down-beat “America is beset by countless enemies, and the liberal europhiles are eating away at our moral fiber, and future historians will someday look back and wonder how we let the splendor of our fragile democratic institutions be ground down by the Levellers and Diversitists and Haters of Freedom” would have been just as likely to be protested.
The most important thing for any speaker is know your audience. If you don’t, or decide you don’t need to, y0u’re going to get slapped down, hard. That may be worth it, for some causes, but irking a bunch of college graduates doesn’t seem to be one of them.
Every Commencement/Graduation I’ve ever been to has been “an opportunity for Grandstanding”. I thought that was the point of the whole exercise.
For me; I was Sermonized at one, and the second one, thankfully I was working. All I wanted was the paper for a raise.
I think Hedges’ comments would have been perfectly proper at a symposium or speaking event on “War and Empire,” for example, or “Diverse Views on US Foreign Policy,” or “Journalists Talk About Iraq.” Not at a graduation.
Or look at it another way. If he’d gotten up there and said, “I am here to talk about mothers and evil,” and went on at length about how bad his mother was, and how all mothers are really bad people, and his mom used to beat him with a willow switch, and all mothers really hate their kids, even the ones that pretend to be supportive, and look how many mothers drown their babies, and … well, I suspect that a few folks would have been upset, too, by the impropriety of the topic chosen for the venue (and, perhaps, by the ideology as well, especially among those who had mothers in the audience).
I would hope that a graduate of a service academy wouldn’t wear a sidearm to the ceremony. I guess that would be one way to keep speeches short!
I was thinking more along the lines of: as officers, they will more than likely serve overseas, interacting with the host nations people. They would be in a position most favorable to influence what the locals think about the US and its people. Mr Hedges opinion, directed at the officers, may have actually influenced a few.
What I’m most unhappy about, and what I wrote about on my weblog, is the behavior of the audience. Yes, Hedges’ remarks were unpopular. But I dislike the impulse these days that everything we disagree with needs to be shouted down. Yes, they have the right to do it. But couldn’t the audience members with air horns rushing to snap off the invited guest’s microphone still be guilty of inappropriate behavior? And be called on that?
If Rummy came to my college graduation, I would be adult enough to sit and listen to him. And if a ruckus broke out, I would blame the audience, not the Secretary, for ruining my graduation.
Being an endlessly polite and decorous person, Adam, I’d agree with you, to at least some degree. I would have preferred that the audience members who disagreed with Hedges had expressed their disagreement in another way — not because it somehow trod upon his right to express himself, but because it’s, well, undecorous (and returning impoliteness for impoliteness is rarely justified).
Heck, a simple “I’ll remember that you chose and supported this speaker” letter to the alumni association when they inevitably started their post-graduate dunning would have probably been more effective.
Still, as much as I am for pomp and circumstance (and I am definitely for pomp and circumstance), there is a certain element of carnival in the graduation air that lets me cut them at least a little break for their improper behavior.
I’m of the opinion that the graduation speech should have reflected the accomplishments of the graduates themselves, how good they should feel about following through and getting that degree, and what lessons life will hand them as they grow and continue to learn.
That would have been appropriate.
I think the rudeness of the audience was, while NOT acceptable, at the very least understandable. Celebrate the grads….put the focus where it belongs.