Another commencement address wasted

Danny Glover to address graduates

By Alexander Marlow
From the May 2007 Print Edition

            What are the qualities that make someone a good commencement speaker?  Honor, wisdom, graciousness?  Or bigotry, racism, and Communism?  Most would find the first three adjectives compelling criteria, but not the Senior Class Council of UC Berkeley.  This group of 10 “Californians” (an alumni-supported student group that sponsors events) that is entrusted with the task of choosing a commencement speaker each year, has again squandered an opportunity to leave Cal students with one last great collegiate memory, because this year the Council chose Danny Glover.

            It’s surprising that such a bone-headed decision could materialize.  My guess is the ignorance of the advisory council is to blame.  The Daily Californian reported that, of the 13 candidates for speaker, seven were movie actors, seven were television personalities, two were athletes, and one was a musician. There are eight qualifications for a speaker, among which are inspirational work and leadership.  The Council already gave itself a nearly impossible task: to find leadership and inspiration in a group of entertainers, a type of people typically lacking in leadership.

But the real outrage is not the field of considered candidates — because admittedly a couple of them would have been interesting — but that the council chose Danny Glover, the most radical leftist of the bunch.  Between making terrible B movies and advocating Communism, pacifism, and racism, Glover stifles intellectual growth:

Even for the UC Berkeley campus, Glover’s resume is impressive: 

• He is a supporter of the exoneration of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the confirmed cop killer.
• He has stated that he believes Osama bin Laden should not receive the death penalty because it would be “inhumane.”
• He has also made his opinion of America perfectly clear: “President Bush implemented a military tribunal ... which will make it easier for us to execute [people]."  And again: "One of the main purveyors of violence in this world has been this country [America].”
• He blamed 9/11 on Americans’ “overconsumption,” which is “taking a terrible toll on this planet” — not Islamic terror.
• He doesn’t believe the United States should hold military detainees.  Perhaps he has not considered that the alternative is that we execute all of our captives.
• He supports reparations for slavery.
• Glover, along with Harry Belafonte, signed a declaration critical of the United States and supportive of Fidel Castro’s Cuba called “To the Conscience of the World.”  He has visited the Communist dictator in Havana several times.
• He has said that he can’t get a cab in New York because he is black.
• He has said “I hate George W. Bush,” and “yes, he’s a racist.”
• He supports drivers’ licenses for illegal aliens in California.
• He has introduced Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez before a crowd of people at Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Harlem.  During the speech, Chavez proclaimed George W. Bush a “devil.”
• Glover has posed for numerous photos in which he hugs Hugo Chavez.

 Glover is a garden-variety radical leftist and has never engaged in discourse accessible to mainstream America.  He is an unabashed pacifist yet he has gained most of his fame and fortune from the extremely violent Lethal Weapon movies.  He blames America’s “overconsumption” for terrorist attacks on our soil, but he loyally supports Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, despite the fact that Citgo Petroleum Company is a state-owned enterprise of Venezuela!

            The Daily Cal reported President Flora Kuo decided to pursue a speaker that was not a politician, because she thought Fabian Núñez stood up graduates last year because he was a politician. The real reason Núñez stood up graduates last year was because he was a leftist.  While it may be true Núñez missed the commencement address solely because he did not want to incur union backlash, I believe a lefty actor would not have crossed that picket line either. To disqualify all politicians based on the Núñez fiasco is silly — only union-backing Democrats need to be excluded.

The fact that Danny Glover, one of the country’s most visible America bashers, is delivering the commencement address at the country’s greatest public university is, of course, ironic.  Here at Cal, I have come to expect that our speaking engagements will be open forums for leftist ideology.  The Senior Class Council has proven to us that there truly is a leadership crisis in this country. I can only sympathize with the graduates, who after four years of hard work at a difficult school, can only celebrate with a man whose political analysis would not get him a passing grade on a Poli Sci 2 midterm.

Danny Glover is not a deep thinker, he is not a proven leader, and he has not earned this invitation.  Although I was not surprised by the Council’s choice, my heart goes out to graduating seniors whose last college lecture will be the most meaningless of their college career and perhaps their lives.

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