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My Address—and Apology—to Yale
Boola boola. Or as the say over at the development office, moolah, moolah.
And so, my about-to-be-fellow alumni, I wish you every success as you enter that never-ending graduate school called life. Have adventures! Make journeys! Make memories! Make future Yalies!
Say the cool lines.
What do I mean by “cool lines”?
Well, I was called for jury duty not long ago. During the preliminary part called voir dire—which you French majors know translates as “Interminable process that makes you regret registering to vote”—the judge was asking us questions about our suitability to serve.
Being red-blooded Americans grateful for the sacrifices of Valley Forge and the Founders who left us the Constitution and Bill of Rights, we were, naturally, all doing our best to weasel our way out of jury duty.
I saw my opportunity when the judge asked us if any of us knew anyone in law enforcement. I was married to a CIA officer. I saw my chance. But not wanting to end up like poor Scooter Libby, Yale class of ’72, I raised my hand and said, “Your honor, may I…approach?”
I’d seen this on Law & Order.
He looked at me and said, “Approach.”
And I thought, Cool. So I approached. And spent the next three weeks on the jury.
But it got me to thinking that we too rarely get to utter the really cool lines, the ones you hear in the movies.
How many of us get to say, “Sponge, clamp, sutures”? Or “Three, two, one, ignition”? Or “I’d like to thank the Academy”?
Or “I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly…faithfully…execute…”
Count on a Harvard-educated Supreme Court justice to screw up a 35-word oath of office. Dude!
Or “Up periscope!” How cool would that be to say that? In my case, it probably would be “Down periscope”—after accidentally ramming some Greenpeace research vessel. “And get us the hell out of here!”
“But Captain Buckley, what about the survivors?”
“Screw the survivors—this is my career we’re talking about!”
When I fly home, I call the house from the airport and declare, “The Eagle has landed!” To which the reply is usually, “Great. Tell the Eagle to pick up a quart of milk on the way home.”
So, ladies and gentlemen, go forth and speak the cool lines. Yes, you can!
But whatever else life holds in store for you, and may it hold every blessing and every happiness, there’s one very cool line that you can already say: “Yale, two-thousand-nine.”
It’s whatever-proof.
So as they say at the development office, whose best friend forever you now officially are—boola, boola.
God bless. Have amazing lives. Knock ’em dead.
Christopher Buckley’s books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
It's Time for Us to Go
Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
A Prize Too Far
Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
Very nice address, Mr. Buckley. I'll bet the class of ought-nine was grateful to have you speak to them. Hope they laughed at hearing this address as much as I did reading it and gave you a proper standing ovation.
Mr. Buckley, just read Losing Mum and Pup. Great story. I am President & GM of The Blade in Toledo, OH and we did a book review. I would like to send it to you but have no clue for an address. Would you mind sending instructions. Love all the books, they make me laugh at night when the days in this buisiness make me throw up! Joe Zerbey at jzerbey@toledoblade.com
Mr. Bucley. Thank you. It`s so refreshing to read something that is clever and at the same time funny... 'Whatever-proof', that was brilliant.
Whatever, dick head.
pricklypear didn't go to college.
Oooh prickly-
You got scrubbed.
Bad bad girl.
I read it though-
Hahahahaha.
It was meant in fun. I am sure C.B. was not offended. At least I meant none. Oh, well.
I do think
The censorship
Here is getting
A little heavy-handed.
And unnecessarily so.
"This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors"
I don't dig it. If your going to remove comments you might as well just remove the whole comment section. What's the point?
It's because they (the editors) have that toxic combination of self-importance and no sense of humor. Most of the comments are so glowing, I have to assume they are planted.
@Eric - Good call. Tina Brown flubs another one.
what on earth did you smoke while writing that?
whatever.
btw, we penn people would like to thank you yale people for screwing up the government so spectacularly, as it distracts from what our people did to the economy...;-)
See! You done good!
In the words of my eighteen year old son, 'it's all good Dad!"
This was just the laugh and words to hear at a graduation, they make sense and give sound theological advice.
'Whatever,' sounds best when applied to the situations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan, wherever the hell that is.
No more of this Yale/harvard application of foreign policy, we need real foreign policy wonks, who can see the light of day and work the martini circuit. This of course leaves out the Far
Right Wing Nut section of the Grand Orgy Party, for they would never use alcohol. G-d Forbid, they should indulge in one of life's pleasures.
Thank you Mr. Buckley, for the commentary on today's society and the honesty to admit when you have made a mistake. Whatever and it's all good Dad!
Excellent. its all good in the end, and if it is not good, then its not the end, yet. Reminds me of a rather funny story from my own school days.
the best of all graduation speeches i have heard or read this year!
I left Yale with George Bush's father just as Buckley's father was beginning his tirade against left-wing faculty. Christopher is the best gift Bill Buckley ever gave to his alma mater or to the rest of us for that matter.
Very funny. Buckley has mastered the genre of high falutin' trash talk.
Having read "Losing Mum and Pup" this week (a highly recommended read for anyone who enjoyed this address), it is interesting that Buckley neglected to include the four-letter-incident and the subsequent gift. Because he included the fact that Dad gathered the relatives and split early, leaving Christopher wondering where they were. Dad explained later that he thought Christopher must surely have had other plans.
well said, mr. buckley.
whatever.....
Nice speech, Mr. Buckley. But Mr. Rumsfeld didn't go to Andover-- he is a proud Trevian, having graduated from New Trier, in Winnetka, IL. So perhaps there is still hope for Andover yet.
Hahahahahahahaa ... I'm sorry Buck, but it is funny. Much better than Mr. Kendall ... fer sure!
No Nietzsche on your bathroom wall?
Some assert that young Buckley was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, from an incomprehensible, intellectual snob of a sire. But every time I read, or see him speak, he simply exudes lightness and joy. This speech was no exception.
Chris, brilliant. And how heartening that you filled in for Alan Greenspan on such short notice.
Another opportunity blown by young Buckley to repudiate his late "Pup"s comments that people infected by HIV ought to have their asses tattooed. The sub-prime commentator Mo Rocca agrees; another sign of W.F.'s poison of the national dialogue. Christopher, after all this time, it seems that you agree with your late father regarding hatred of people with AIDS, and that's truly a shame - and something you ought to be ashamed of.
There's some funny material here. Who wrote it? George Patton
For effs sake, Buckley (as we say in Oxford), I love you dearly but you've no right to write like this unless you're collecting social security!
Well done Mr. Buckley....as all your writings, this was another great read. Love your new book...
i need to meet this guy. something about him that is so familiar to what i grew up with in the 70s, with extra pages in his dictionary. good message, cb. your dad would, if he could, give you back the four keys to the underwood.
Someday, Christopher Buckley's illegitimate son will read this lengthy exercise in compulsive talking and wonder what manner of non-man his father was.
And the answer will be simple:
An effete one, too stupid, really, to operate a condom.
A creature out of Evelyn Waugh: one of the dogs or cats.
So who, Hugh, would you prefer? m-m-m-m-Mike Tyson?
Great commencement, I am sure your father approves this, one of the best pieces i have read in a long time.
It's been my experience that ALL Ivy League grads are "WHATEVER" proof!
Any foible is fondly looked upon as the oh-sooo-charming eccentricity of an idiot/savant...well, you know Einstein couldn't button his own shirt! This can get rather tedious for coworkers.
That said, I've known some brilliant Yalies.
In writing "Loosing Mum and Pup," Buckley brought his parents alive...ahh... takes more courage than an overnight sail in a northeaster. He envelops the reader in their dazzling world...a world that seems increasingly "meth labby", to quote his son Connor.
The hat ritual reminded me of a Kennedy speech (maybe it was written by Buckley...who I think wrote for Kennedy after Taft :)
"Frank O'Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off their hats and tossed them over the wall--and then they had no choice but to follow them.
This Nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space, and we have no choice but to follow it. Whatever the difficulties, they will be overcome. Whatever the hazards, they must be guarded against.... we will climb this wall with safety and with speed-and we shall then explore the wonders on the other side."
I wonder did anyone leave after 10 minutes like your Dad did at your commencement?(just read that in your new book) Great Speech and book!
Thank you.
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