For those of you who haven’t been able to listen to the online version of this yet, there’s a nice round up of some of Stephen’s “Class Day” quotes in this article. From The Daily Princetonian:
Colbert to Class of 2008: Don’t change the world
By Kelly Lack
Senior Writer
Published: Monday, June 2nd, 2008
Photo by Zachary Ruchman
Stephen Colbert thanks the assembled graduating seniors after being presented with the “Class of 2008 Understandable Vanity Award” at Class Day. In his speech to the graduating class, Colbert playfully urged them not to change the world because “some of us like it the way it is.”“Gandhi said, ‘you must be the change you want to see in the world,’” Stephen Colbert told an audience of thousands at the Class Day ceremony this afternoon. “But may I also point out he drank his own urine, so let’s not go overboard on his advice.”
. . .
“The job of savior looks like a really hard one,” he said. “I mean, Jesus only took the job to please his dad — and he reminded us that if you wanted to be like him, you had to take up the cross and follow him.”
“To me, that thing looks kind of heavy. Wouldn’t it be easier for you to take up your remote control and follow me?” he added.
. . .
When asked by another reporter whether writing a graduation speech is like writing an episode of his show, Colbert explained that one of the hardest things about “doing a speech like this is I don’t know who is invited to this: me or the character.”
“My show is an ongoing argument with my audience,” Colbert explained. “That’s what this sort of is: It’s a call to inaction.”
. . .
Maybe, in the future, people need to start specifying whether they’re inviting Stephen Colbert, the man, or “Stephen Colbert”, the character …
UPDATED TO ADD: Here’s some video of the event, courtesy of Cardinal Tiger over at Daily Kos.
“And you will reproduce — I’m fairly certain you know how to do that by now”
I forgot about that. That’s a great line
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Wow, the Princeton reporters are quick but not as quick as NFZ! :)
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This is great! I didn’t catch everything when I watched the keynote address live. There was a lot of good material in Stephen’s speech and having the streaming video go in and out didn’t help.
This is something I missed earlier that I really like: “Many of you are calling this election a change year. Obama has said, ‘We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.’ Well, if that’s true, what are we clearly good at? Waiting. I say we go with our strengths and just keep doing it.”
I loved this quote from the article: “As for the beer jacket, he said it ‘will be great for bootlegging’ and ‘sneaking stuff into concerts.’”
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I can’t believe I missed this! I had to go apparently minutes before he made his speech. The gods of timing are against me it seems, lately.
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I uploaded the audio Amanda, see a few entries back.
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I actually saw that right after I left the comment. Thank you, wondrous vigwig! Virtual hugs!
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Wondrous? LOL! Behold, Abracadabra
Snippets on youtube.
:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUeudEfix_g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FqdMmtDv0M
They block Daily Kos at work so I can’t tell if these are duplicating what’s up there or not.
virtual hugs back
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They’re the same ones from Daily Kos.
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I was there – a couple of my friends and I took the day off from school and snuck into the Princeton campus to see the speech – it was one of the funniest speeches I ever heard! I hope someone has the full transcript, because that would just make my life.
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You raise a good point here. The speech was inspired, but I’d love to hear what Colbert had to say about this election out of character. He seems quite eloquent out of character on issues of faith and social justice, and I’d have been very interested to hear him on that, especially as a complement to Paul Farmer’s baccalaureate address:
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S21/23/59Q49/index.xml?section=topstories
Colbert and Farmer, incidentally, have kind of similar biographies. I would kill to watch them go toe-to-toe on Lord of the Rings trivia on a future Report. (But that would require action.)
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I actually enjoy the fact that Stephen slips in and out of character throughout some of his public engagements — it’s so neat to watch.
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