Fifty-seven minutes ago, the New York Times posted this Facebook status update:
Sonia Sotomayor. John McCain. Patti Smith. Michelle Obama. Glenn Beck. Meryl Streep. John Grisham. Rachel Maddow. Read excerpts from their commencement speeches to the graduates of 2010.
I have imagined what these excerpts might be.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR: “You call THAT a gown?”
JOHN MCCAIN: “Oh you rah-rah-sis-boom-bah matriculating types, with your phone booth stuffing, goldfish swallowing, and Triceratops-tipping.”
PATTI SMITH: “I’d like to thank the selection committee for asking me to speak today, it is indeed an honor. But as for the walk-on music of ‘The Warrior’… that was Patty SMYTH you freaking morons.”
MICHELLE OBAMA: “The modern woman can do anything she sets her mind to. Let’s say your husband is flying to the Gulf Coast yet again, overcompensating for a seeming lack of passionate concern in the spill’s early weeks, and forgot that he promised to deliver a speech at some podunk college. You can be a last-minute substitute at that speech! Oh, and also, I planted that garden.”
GLENN BECK: “I’m sorry, I don’t like to walk out on anything, but I was not properly notified that there would be non-white students in the crowd.”
MERYL STREEP: “Just doing some research for one of my lesser modern-day roles, this one being a stuffy English professor who learns a few lessons herself! Primarily to loosen up and LIVE when she falls in love with a dashing man on campus she assumes to be a fellow faculty member but is actually a returning adult student in her class! Not to mention he is the father of the boy dating her daughter, whose father, my ex-husband, is head of the English department. Plus I do a Baltimore accent.”
JOHN GRISHAM: “Recognize your strengths, and pursue your dreams. You could be a great lawyer. You could be a great writer. And if you’re half-assed at both, things can still work out just fine.”
RACHEL MADDOW: “If you had a nice short cut like mine, those tasseled caps you’ve got on would not result in hat head.”
Jack Silbert, curator