My Commencement Address

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John Zoiner / Getty Images What would you say to 9,000 people whose fondest wish is to get you off the podium? The Daily Beast's resident wit waxes neurotic about an imminent speech to the Class of 2009.

I have to give a speech at a commencement exercise, and I’m a little nervous.

There will be seven or eight thousand or so people there. I once spoke to 9,000 people, but they managed to fit them all into a structure that resembled a zeppelin hangar, so it was a contained space in which whatever laughter I generated could ricochet and hang around for a bit, encouraging others to join in. With real estate, it’s location, location, location. In public speaking, it’s acoustics, acoustics, acoustics.

Next Sunday’s event will be, perforce, en plein air, and that giant sucking sound (to paraphrase Ross Perot) will be my words going straight up into the trees, clouds, and roar of passing airplanes; or quite possibly, rain.

Let me say to President Obama, as he addresses Notre Dame today: I feel your pain.

It’s one thing if you’re say, Hitler, addressing 100,000 Nazis standing at attention in the stadium at Nuremberg—they pretty much had to pretend to be listening and laughing at his jokes. It’s another if your audience includes grandparents and fidgety 3-year olds who want to go to the bathroom now, to say nothing of eager grads thinking, Who is this dickhead speaking?

I’m haunted, too, by the fact that I spoke on this same spot at my own graduation day, a thousand years or so ago, albeit in a far lesser capacity than the featured speaker. Being young and oh-so-clever, I thought it would be witty to close my oration with a quote that depended on the f-word. I still wake up at 3 a.m. in a clammy sweat, remembering that golden moment. At the level of taste, it was on par with Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction. How proud my parents were.

I’ve given one or two commencement speeches before, though never to a university. The first time was to my boarding school alma mater, Portsmouth Abbey, an excellent place run by Benedictine monks. I was surprised to be invited (by the lay headmaster), inasmuch as I had recently come out in print as an agnostic collapsed Catholic.

I cross-examined him suspiciously, at some length. “Are you sure?” I said warily.

“Absolutely,” he insisted. “We definitely want you.”

My very Catholic father, learning of the invitation, emailed me hotly to say that he was “appalled” that I had accepted such an “inappropriate” invitation, adding that “if I were a parent of one of the students graduating, I would walk out of the ceremony and urge the other parents to join me in boycotting you.”

We’ll put you down as undecided, leaning against.

I replied, somewhat frostily, that I had not sought this invitation, had in fact tried to turn it down, and had only accepted it when it was pressed on me to such a degree that to decline would have seemed rude. He dismissed this as irrelevant. We did not speak for months. But let me say to President Obama, as he addresses Notre Dame today: I feel your pain.

Arriving at the headmaster’s office on the appointed day, I was greeted by a smirk and low, ironic chuckle: “I must say, your selection as speaker has proven to be most controversial.”

“Thank you,” I said somewhat grimly. “You certainly know how to make a speaker feel relaxed and full of confidence.”