{"id":478,"date":"2009-05-14T01:01:15","date_gmt":"2009-05-14T01:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/obamas-commencement-address.html"},"modified":"2009-05-14T01:01:15","modified_gmt":"2009-05-14T01:01:15","slug":"obamas-commencement-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/obamas-commencement-address.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s commencement address"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Obama<\/span>This is it. Really. Only it’s the commencement at Arizona State–a university that decided not to give Obama an honorary degree, in contrast to what Notre Dame will do on Sunday. The honorary degree issue is becoming the favored talking point among many die-hard Notre Dame opponents who seem to want to appear open to Obama speaking but not to “honoring” him with a degree. I don’t see the distinction, really–inviting him as featured commencement speaker is the honor everyone will remember, but perhaps I am slighting the prestige of a commemorative sheepskin. <\/p>\n

Anyway, ASU officials apparently drew fire for making that distinction, and they seemed from the New York Times account<\/a> to be a bit chagrined. But as is becoming the pattern, President Obama turned the issue to his advantage in what strikes me as a clever and gracious speech with a better message than most: <\/p>\n

\n

[Mr. Obama] used the controversy to make the point that no one should be satisfied with “the outward markers of success,” either as individuals or as a country. <\/p>\n

“I come here not to dispute the suggestion that I haven’t achieved enough in my life,” Mr. Obama told tens of thousands of students and relatives packed into Sun Devil Stadium. “First of all, Michelle concurs with that assessment. She has a long list of things I have not yet done waiting for me when I get home. <\/p>\n

“But more than that,” he added, “I come to embrace the notion that I haven’t done enough in my life. I heartily concur. I come to confirm that one’s title, even a title like president of the United States, says very little about how well one’s life has been led — and that no matter how much you’ve done, or how successful you’ve been, there’s always more to do, always more to learn, and always more to achieve.”<\/p>\n

The decision not to award an honorary degree to Mr. Obama was taken by many as a snub, especially after university officials explained that “his body of work is yet to come.” Embarrassed university officials tried to contain the damage by renaming its most important financial aid program the President Barack Obama<\/font><\/a> Scholars Program, which will benefit 1,600 freshmen this fall.<\/p>\n

The university’s president, Michael Crow, heaped praise on Mr. Obama in introducing him on Wednesday night. “You’ve lit a fire under all of us to move America forward,” Mr. Crow said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Obama thanked him and called the controversy “much ado about nothing.” But he still aimed a barb at the university’s leadership. “President Crow and the board of regents will soon learn about being audited by the I.R.S.,” he joked.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ha ha. But his foes will be furious. I just hope he’s that good this Sunday, though again, there’s not much he can say at this point that will change many minds. So I wonder if he will keep it light and generic. That would be the temptation, and I hope he doesn’t succumb. <\/p>\n

Here is some good early WaPo<\/em> feed<\/a> off the event as well. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is it. Really. Only it’s the commencement at Arizona State–a university that decided not to give Obama an honorary degree, in contrast to what Notre Dame will do on Sunday. The honorary degree issue is becoming the favored talking point among many die-hard Notre Dame opponents who seem to want to appear open to Obama speaking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,7,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nObama's commencement address - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/obamas-commencement-address.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Obama's commencement address - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is it. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}