Sunday, May 1, 2011

Worst All-Time Commencement Speaker?

It took a long time, but the University of Michigan finally found a worse graduation speaker than the one who addressed the College of LSA graduates the year my daughter got her undergraduate degree.

The year was 1994 and the temperature was about 35 degrees and raining when I had to sit in the Big House and listen to the author of the cartoon strip "Cathy" talk to the graduates, including many intelligent young women, about the virtues of going into the women's restroom and eating a box of donuts when something goes wrong.

No wonder my daughter ended up as a researcher into solutions for obesity, given the send-off that ding-dong gave her.

In the year's since, I've read of far more famous commencement speakers than the nitwit my daughter had to listen to. Why didn't they have him or her when Jennifer graduated, I'd fume.

But this year, U of M finally outdid the Cathy spectre when they invited Rick Snyder, the Republican governor who wants to cut the heart out of higher education so that the younger siblings of this year's graduates will end up paying more tuition from what will be a lower quality education.

Yes, there is a worse commencement speaker than that cartoon writer, and his policies are no laughing matter.

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