Are you like me: do you hate the local television news? The newscast that addresses you like you’re a four-year-old (“Take your umbrella to work…”) and aims at your emotions rather than your intellect (“Parents terrified by an outbreak of scuffed knees among kindergarteners…”), that buries the lead story (“Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years for $7 billion Ponzi scheme…”) whenever there’s heartwarming fluff to be dished out (“Woman saved from burning car by stranger weeks ago thinks he’s a good guy…”), the one that ignores the news of the world (“Euro zone economic crisis awaits Greek vote results…”) to spend precious minutes on pointless poofery (“We asked for your opinions on bunnies, and you Tweeted up a storm…”).
And have you always suspected that, deep inside, that those well-scrubbed, bubble-headed bleach blonde boys and girls are actually in on the shameful scam, that they know damn good and well what they and their cross-town colleagues are doing? Then you want to watch this: from the fine folks at WGN-TV in Chicago, the honest local news promo you’ve always wanted to see.
It was Friday afternoon when I saw the headline and giggled a little to myself (no need to let everyone else in on what I was doing). It struck me as funny that a commencement speaker told a group of graduating high school seniors that they weren’t special, that someone had gifted the graduates with a surprise package of honesty such as they likely don’t receive at home.
Today, I looked at the video of that speech and was surprised—pleasantly—when I found that the people who wrote headlines about the “buzzkill” commencement speaker had missed the whole point.
This is not some blowhard scrounged up to give a graduation day speech: he is Wellesley High School’s own veteran English teacher David McCullough, Jr., son of the historian, apparently a well-respected member of this upper class community in Wellesley, MA. (He’s given the faculty message at graduation before, said some of the same things six years ago!) If you watch the people in the background and listen to the other sounds, you see and hear a lot of laughter and head-nodding agreement with where he’s going in this speech—telling the students that “if everyone is special, then no one is” to shake them out of their certificate of participation-filled, everybody-gets-a-trophy world.
…we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point—and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece…
(snip)
No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it; now it’s “So what does this get me?”
McCullough’s lively and humorous talk isn’t mean-spirited at all. He is serious in telling his students that they’ve been coddled by their parents (and the school and American society, to an extent) but those days are over, but his message comes out of love for the kids, and what I think is the right-headed realization that we’ve got to wake them up and stop spoiling them if we wish them to be successful and contributing members of society.
I also hope you’ve learned enough to recognize know how little you know..how little you know now, at the moment, for today is just the beginning. It’s where you go from here that matters.
(snip)
The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life, is an achievement, not something that will fall into your lap because you’re a nice person or mommy ordered it from the caterer.
And without preaching, he spreads the word: do great things but don’t do them for yourself—do them for their own sake, or for the sake of others.
And then, you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself; the sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special, because everyone is.
Last week Fox News CEO Roger Ailes said in a speech at Ohio University that “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart had told him some years ago that he (Stewart) was a socialist; Stewart was on vacation and didn’t offer any response/defense/denial. ; It seems that no one got too terribly worked up about this “accusation” against an entertainer, although I’d half expected the Fox News Commentariat to hyperventilate into unconsciousness over the revelation. ; (They may have; I don’t watch, so I don’t know what they did (or didn’t) do.)
Now Stewart’s back from vacation and last night he did respond, staking out what it is that he does believe in, absent the simplistic and obfuscatory labeling that supplies so much of what passes for political analysis today…and, naturally, he found a way to use that explanation to (1) point out the hypocrisy among the conservative extremists considered among the leaders of today’s Republican Party, and (2) make me laugh. ; What more do you need? (Click the pic)
Please take three minutes and click here: look at these two remarkable photos; read this thoughtful essay; give a thought to those of our fellow Americans who were lost while picking up the tab for the lives we enjoy.
It is impossible to be unmoved by the juxtaposition of the eternal stone-faced warrior and the disheveled modern military wife-turned-widow, him rigid in his dress uniform, her on the floor in her blanket nest, wearing glasses and a baggy T-shirt, him nearly concealed by shadow while the pale blue light from the computer screen illuminates her like God’s own grace.
(snip)
I believe that the civilian-military gap isn’t always born of indifference, but rather, at times, a sense of helplessness on the civilian side. What can I do? If you do nothing else, you can remember those who have given their lives for their country. Our country. Remembrance, which may seem a modest contribution in the moment, is a sacred act with long-term payoff — a singularly human gift that keeps on giving, year after, year after, war-fatigued year. I don’t need to remind you that America’s sons and daughters are still dying in combat. I don’t want to browbeat you into feeling guilty for not doing more. Instead, I want to tell you that as the wife of a veteran, it is tremendously meaningful to know that on this Memorial Day, civilians will be bearing witness and remembering in their own way — that those who are gone are not forgotten. I also want to say that as you remember them, we remember you.
Lots of last-minute unavoidable changes made for an especially hectic day at work; I grow more and more fatigued of reading about the political impasse without any real promise of light at the end of the tunnel; they say this is the hottest start to a year since they started keeping records here 120 years ago; and then Bill Watterson reaches out from the past to hit the nail on the head. Thanks, I needed that.
