Chris Berman, world's worst commencement speaker

Since when do high schools have guest commencement speakers? What, they couldn't nominate a teacher to do it instead?

 

Still probably better than our guest speaker, a teacher who had retired the year before. She was the French teacher, and we were her last class or something. All I know is I stopped taking French after Grade 7 -- I think only 12 in our class actually took French all of the way through -- and she did the entire thing with her back turned to us, half in French, and rambled on for 45 minutes. 13 years later and I still have no idea what she was talking about. My dad fell asleep in the crowd. That was the highlight of it.

But then again, she was not a celebrity and she isn't paid to speak in front of people on on a daily basis. I hear Berman and it's a quick change of the channel. Guy's insufferable.

 

Never been to Greenwich, eh?

 

What I think is funny, I'm guessing he was not there out of civic pride or or the goodness of his heart. he probably collected a tidy sum to speak. No one in the article was up in arms over it being a waste of money or really upset in general. Just bored and amused by how bad it was.

 

At my sister's college graduation, the author of the "Celestine Prophecies" was the commencement speaker. I felt like he was stoned out of his mind as he rambled on and on and on. It was touchy-feely wandering in search of a topic. When it ended, he got a rousing round of relieved applause that his speech was finally over, 35 minutes later.

My father was a minister and he said if you can't say it in under 20 minutes, it isn't worth it. I adhere to that rule.

 

We had a guest speaker at our high school in a town small enough to be considered a suburb of Lexington, KY. Don't remember who it was though. Someone from EKU, I think.

 

What's considered a guest commencement speaker? At mine, one of the fathers spoke. He was a highly decorated law enforcement official and had worked as sheriff in multiple counties. When he died a few years ago, it was a big deal in the state.

Would that be considered as a guest speaker?

 

Face it, how many good high school commencement speakers are there?
Didn't see the video, just the text, but it sounded like my town's high school had one hell of an emotional commencement speech this year: a local comedian, actor, director, newspaper arts writer (and MC of the comedy-variety show I'm involved with every year)...whose youngest daughter was supposed to be getting her diploma that night. Instead, the summer after her freshman year, she was killed when the SUV she, her older sister and a couple of friends were in blew a tire and rolled over on I-95 on their way to the beach (the others were pretty banged up, but lived). I'm sure the auditorium he gave it in got pretty dusty (as did the room I read it online in), but he struck just the right notes in a Valvanoesque way. The accident had a pretty big impact in town - there was about a three-hour wait outside the church at the wake, and practically every off-duty cop in the state was there (his brother is the current state police superintendent, and he's probably performed at the bachelor parties of half the state's cops).

 

My brothers HS grad had a good "Guest speaker" this year. Another teacher who was retiring, but had a good connection with the kids. Went through the entire class -- small village, small class -- and said something heartfelt about each of them. Kept it to about 10-15 minutes. It was good.

 

They should have let Berman read the list of graduate names....