JOHN LEO'S BLOG

Greg Gutfeld wrote, "Let's face it: I was pretty fearless. I mean it takes a lot of courage to criticize a Republican conservative right in front of an audience of Democrats, academics, liberals, and radical vegans. I call that 'speaking truth to power!' John McCain being the power. Me being the truth."

The speech by Ms. Insufferable, aka Jean Rohe, is here, and her retort to McCain aide Mark Salter's comments is here.

McCain's speech called for more civility in political life. Ms. Insufferable looked up the speech on McCain's website and trashed it at the commencement ceremony before the senator had a chance to speak. What better way to demonstrate the need for civility?

Still, McCain made several mistakes. He knew he would be attacked at the New School, the left-most academic institution in America. But when the trashing preceded his talk, he should have responded and spoken directly to the students about what was happening. Instead, he doggedly stuck to the prepared speech, which had already been delivered (in twisted form) by the self-obsessed Rohe.

It was politically shrewd of McCain to give the same commencement speech three different times at academic institutions of left, center, and right. But this decision played into the hands of detractors who realized it was a political stunt. Commencement speeches are mostly nonsense and gibberish, but their audiences know when the speakers are essentially ignoring them and talking to a national audience about politics or the speaker's own career. Also, college students are very sensitive about seeing the speech used twice and put on the Internet before they have to sit through it on graduation day.

There is one foolproof and obvious way to meet all complaints about commencement addresses–just eliminate the speeches. They are pointless anachronisms. Young people are rarely eager to hear Polonius-type advice from the middle-aged and the elderly, particularly on graduation day. Garry Trudeau once said that the real purpose of commencement speeches is to make sure that no college seniors are released into the world until they have been properly sedated. True enough.