My Commencement Speech to Rutgers’ Geniuses: Go Forth and Fail

The Daily Beast ^ | 18 May 2014 | PJ O'Rourke

[Rummyfan]

Greetings, Class of 2014. So Condoleezza Rice was too offensive for you. Just wait until Monday morning. Did you learn how to spell KFC?

Rutgers Did Not Invite Me to Give Its Commencement Speech Today…

The university got pretty confused about who would, after Condoleezza Rice declined.

Rutgers invited, then disinvited, then re-invited Eric LeGrand, the Rutgers defensive tackle who was paralyzed from the shoulders down in a 2010 football game. LeGrand went on to write two books, become a motivational speaker, and finish his Rutgers degree via Skype.

Between inviting and re-inviting LeGrand, Rutgers invited and confirmed the invitation of former New Jersey governor and former head of the 9/11 Commission Tom Kean. So the university has two—and, for all I know, still counting—commencement speakers. But Rutgers never got confused enough to invite me.

Eric LeGrand and Tom Kean are uplifting figures. LeGrand has raised hope. Kean has raised hell with the CIA and FBI. I am not uplifting.

Here Is What I Would Tell the Rutgers Graduating Class of 2014:

[Rummyfan]

Do you know Milton Friedman graduated from Rutgers? Do you know who he is? Won the Nobel Prize for economics. I checked your Department of Economics website. Courses are offered in “Economics of Crime,” “Income Inequality,” “Women in the Economy” (Condoleezza Rice won’t be getting her honorarium for speaking at this ceremony), and “Game Theory.” (Useful on Xbox? Or not so much?) But I don’t see a course called “Capitalism and Freedom,” also the title of the book by Milton Friedman that has been shaping economic debate in this country for half a century.

[TADSLOS]

And there’s civics. Although I suppose living in New Jersey is civics lesson enough.

LMAO.

[econjack]

I taught university-level economics for almost 30 years back when you had to work to get through college. BTW, Game Theory is a mathematical branch of economics that has absolutely nothing to do with playing games on an Xbox.

Also, I was one of those rare breeds who is a staunch conservative and Milton Friedman was my idol. I heard him speak in person on several occasions and was the lucky grad student who got to have dinner with him once. Because of my conservative views, I ate lunch by myself a lot. Still, I learned a lot, and the most valuable lesson is that liberals have no idea why they believe what they do and they are totally incapable of reasoned debate. I used to argue frequently with one Sociology prof and would box her in a corner from which she had no escape. Her response: "Well, that may be but I don't believe it!" Debating a liberal is like talking to a fence post. You'll get equally intelligent answers from both.

[fungoking]

“A general understanding of science is necessary. You don’t have to learn how to cure cancer. You just have to learn that the guy my age with what’s left of his hair tied in a ponytail who works at the organic locavore shop and talks about the healing properties of crystals and magnetic fields is crazy.”

So true...

[Durus]

This was a well deserved beat down of what is considered education these days.

[ZULU]

I graduated from Rutgers and never went to the commencement exercise back in the 1960’s. Guess I had something more important to do - like trim my toenails.

My introduction to “Red” Rutgers was having to sit in an auditorium session in Newark and listen to a freak named Imamu Amirri Baraka (aka LeRoy Jones) give a scatological racist speech on evil white people. There were hundreds of other naive students there who acted as we had been trained to do - just sit there in the presence of authority figures - in this case the morons in Administration who invited this freak to perform. Today, being much older, I would have turned around, dropped by pants, bent over and then walked out.

Rutgers in the past several decades, has been a left-wing monstrosity run by overpaid administrators and employing left-wing Marxists on staff.

I'm sure a good number of students there would have liked to have had the opportunity to hear Ms. Rice speak. She is an intelligent, charming woman with much valuable experience in foreign policy. But since she represents the unacceptable to the radical leftists - a conservative black Republican female, the freaks who populate and control that institution couldn't permit her to generate the “wrong” impression.

They would prefer a moron like Imamu Amirri Baraka (aka LeRoy Jones) Screw Rutgers.

[Night Hides Not]

Had the same technology been available when I was in college, I would have completed my senior thesis in about 3 weeks.

It was 40 pages typed, with 100+ pages more of attachments...took me four months, and one weekend to type using an electric typewriter.

[Oatka]

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.

Two thoughts on that:
Naive people caving in to a minority only strengthens that minority's power to pull crap like that.
Ideological people caving in to a minority all too willingly since it supports their own thinking.

Either way, the students lose.

[dead]

But that 1989 moment of “something there is that doesn’t love a wall” (and I’ll bet you a personal karaoke performance of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” that you can’t name the poet who wrote it)

Robert Frost - Mending Wall and no, I didn't need to look it up.

Rutgers grad here, O'Rourke owes me a song.

[alexander_busek]

I taught university-level economics for almost 30 years back when you had to work to get through college. BTW, Game Theory is a mathematical branch of economics that has absolutely nothing to do with playing games on an Xbox.

That was a joke, son!

Regards,

[alexander_busek]

Rutgers grad here, O'Rourke owes me a song.

I think that he was referring to the present graduating class, most of whom probably have no idea who Robert Frost was.

Regards,

[Hegewisch Dupa]

but ultimately, missing it did go a long way to prove his claim to being an economist...

[econjack]

That was a joke, son!

Perhap...perhaps not. I know a lot of people who think exactly what he said. When I tell people my Ph.D. is in Cliometrics, they think I'm a weatherman. A lot of people just don't have a clue.

[ghost of nixon]

love Milton Freidman! Cool that you got to have dinner with him.

[econjack]

Super cool. I was a grad student and Dr. Gary Walton was my mentor. That night, dinner was with Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman (authors of Time on the Cross), Douglas North (Dr. Walton’s mentor), and Milton Friedman. Friedman, Fogel, and North are all Nobel prize winners...I was afraid to open my mouth. Yet, the talk was little of economics, but mostly about other things. Friedman has just purchased his farm in VT, North bought some property in the South of France, and Fogel and Engerman just joined in the conversation, along with Gary and, rarely, me. Absolutely an amazing evening.