Transcript
0:06 please join me in welcoming to the podium our commencement speaker Dennis leaine wow it's a big room when I was a little kid my parents took next door to the new at the time UMass Boston campus the weekend it opened where we're standing right now
0:38 was by the way a strip mall back then and my mother told me later that it it meant so much in their lives to see this place open because now it meant she could afford to send her kids to college otherwise I I just want to make sure everyone understands before I get started I I dropped out of the
1:09 school I mean you all get that right my buddy Chris Mullen who applied to UMass with me and attended UMass with me and and dropped out of UMass with me he when he heard about this you know he said they give doctorates for playing Space Invaders and missile commands these days he also said if they start giving them off for drinking beer we'll Rule the World
1:41 I want to thank you mass in general I want to thank Chancellor joean gorner and President Wilson associate Chancellor Kenneth Lansky in particular for bestowing this honor upon me I've decided not to let it go to my head except for this weekend just one weekend I'm going to ask everyone to address me as Doctor come Monday though I'll be back to being my normal egist self actually it could be hard though this has
2:11 impressed my mother more than the whole Clintwood movie Academy Awards thing ever did believe me and like any good son it's important to me to make my mom happy my dad too I I graduated from high school 20 years ago with a less than spectacular GPA so I'm not really sure why I'm here I had no clearly defined career path no sense of of what I wanted to be or could be and then I dropped out of the first two
2:41 colleges that were kind enough to accept me I looked back on my late teens and my early 20s and the phrase that occurs to me again and again is my poor parents so to stand before you all today and tell you to follow the strict career path of college to Corporation to Junior partner to corporate board would be I feel disingenuous and if you don't know what disingenuous means then the faculty here is really starting to
3:13 slip I've been to a few commencements myself I sat where you're sitting so let me dispense with the traditional bromides right off the bat Dare To Dream follow your heart be true to your school don't forget the values your family and your elders gave you blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah I can't stand up here and do that your BS go out into the world and the world as we've left it for you is in
3:44 pretty bad shape neoconservatives will have you believe that the solution is to get back to a Rosy hu 1950s era America that never existed Ultra liberals excuse me Ultra liberals will have you believe the solution is to build a Utopia of politically correct speech and politically correct values where nobody offends anyone and no one yet does anything bad or messy and as far as I can tell everyone will die of total and utter
4:18 boredom I see the world through your eyes and I think you must be bewildered because I'm bewildered I ask myself where do we turn for Honor anymore just honor forget Justice forget truth we'll just take honor people and organizations acting honorably but last time I checked no one expected honor of our government when given the chance to act honorably during the recent sex abuse Scandal the church turned into a corporate board and the corporate Boards of the world are
4:44 best exemplified by halberton Enron Tao and all the other robber barons and all the other robber barons who have wrecked our economy and dummied up behind the Fifth Amendment we have set a very bad example for you folks very bad we were supposed to make the world a better place and instead it seems more unstable than it has ever been the good news though it's always been this
5:15 way the world since the dawn of time since the first caveman sold his neighbor a faulty club and used the extra shekels to put a widescreen Plasma on the wall of his cave the world has pretty much worked on the same overriding principle if it's not about the money it's about the money is this the world you want for yourself I hope to God not I hope you realize what the people doing their best to wreck this world have not that it is
5:47 not about the money and it's not about protecting the image of an institution or a government if the image is propagated on lies honor is not Mother Teresa in Kolkata that's beyond honor that's sainthood don't you don't have to shoot that high honor is not an impossible ideal something beyond your grasp honor is dayto day it's minute by minute if you
6:18 have it you live it without question honor is not doing what is easy if it hurts a single soul honor has no room in its house for cynicism skep iism yes always but cynicism no it has no room in its house for greed for the Mindless pursuit of money or Hollow success honor is the affirmative answer to one simple question you ask of yourself every day did I behave with dignity and respect toward all living things that's the
6:47 measure of honor and the measure of humanity if you're cynical you'll say I wasn't honorable today because the world was dishonorable toward me and I just had to fight back sorry wrong answer the measure of a human being lies in not what the world does to him or her but rather how he or she comports herself within that world when someone says oh thank you when someone says oh so cynically oh so jaded the
7:19 world is thus you must reply no thus have we made the world it's been remarked upon by enough friends and acquaintances that I am a pretty self sufficient guy as a person who came from so-called humble Origins to rise to a point where I occasionally have hung out with movie stars and my books were read by presidents well the presidents who actually you know read
7:52 books and it's true I can get really really good seats for Patriots games I gu yes I would be a poster child for those who make good very good money trafficking the myth of the self-made man to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps folks who shovel code words like American individualism down our throats just when they're closing the door in our faces and leaving us to sleep at night out in the cold you know those guys I am not a self-made man this self
8:23 was made with the help of others it is no mistake it is no mistake that of the three men in Mystic River the one who turns out okay is Shawn dine the one with solid loving parents and it's true that Shawn dine was the most autobiographical character I have ever written which quite frankly is why he was the most difficult boring character I've ever tried to write because I'm a pretty boring guy I'm stable and boring Sea's
8:52 parents then were a testament to my own parents I wanted to pay tribute to good people who kept their head down and worked too and sometimes three jobs to raise their kids and never complained people who raise their children to do the same to believe in self-reliance and particularly a lack of whining but and this is so important
9:22 raised us to be very aware how much of self-reliance comes down to luck the luck not to need a helping hand the luck not to be completely alone in this world the luck to have been born the right color at the right time in the right country in essence my parents taught me empathy not sympathy sympathy is easy it's always given from a position of power you sympathize for someone the starving child and the late night
9:53 infomercial the person who lost their trailer in a tornado whoever the hell is on American Idol this week but when you have empathy you empathize with the person you put yourself on equal footing sympathy is easy empathy is hard I remember driving with my father once and someone cut us off and I got all hot and asked why he wasn't beeping his horn or flipping the guy off and my father said you don't know what type of day he's
10:20 had and I looked into the other car and I suddenly didn't see the jerk who cut us off in traffic I saw a weary weary looking guy with a weary looking wife and two cranky kids in a battered old car and I felt there but for the grace of God go I that's empathy since 9/11 something happened to empathy in this country I don't know what exactly but it ain't good I know
10:52 that I wrote a novel in which all the characters have perfectly good and understandable reasons to be angry and they only commit acts of violence and Vengeance once they're sure they're right and yet they're all wrong I think human beings are at their most dangerous when they lose their empathy when they objectify other human beings when they are so sure they are right they feel justified in a take- no prisoners attitude and I don't know when
11:19 mercy and decency became signs of weakness in this country this what you see around you right now what you're graduating from this is welfare public education is a form of Public Welfare a form of Public Assistance the great and wise once decided that it was the duty of any great city or state to provide education for their citizenry and not just Soo
11:51 education solid even exemplary education like you get here that some people still manage to drop out of imagine that but so when the state or the city give a helping hand to their populace that is yes Public Welfare so next time you think about demanding that someone pull himself up by his bootstraps ask yourself if you did or did you have some help from your parents from the state from this
12:25 school there is an angry loud and unfortunately popular contingent in this country they will have you believe empathy and mercy are for the weak they will have you believe that even though their loudest mouths all come from wealth and the only bootstraps they ever pulled were made of imported Italian leather they will have you believe that the future of this country lies in the lack of a helping hand and the Striking motion of an angry one this contingent
12:57 had made themselves Popular by feeding off our inherent need for anger they offer no Solutions with the exception of placing more wealth in the hands of those who don't need it or put another way I need another tax break like Johnny Damon needs more hair meanwhile they assil everything that is good and American and pure in this country the right to free speech the right to love whoever you choose the privilege of helping others less fortunate of educating our children of
13:28 ensuring good life for our elderly of caring from our sick they want to privatize education and privatize Medicare and privatize you right out of every good thing that makes this country great I know another word for privatize but I can't use it because my mom's here and I never swear in front of my mother make no mistake about it these are the same people people whose
13:59 ancestors and ideological compatriots from 80 years ago were against Social Security affordable health care workers comp disability insurance pensions the 8-hour day the 40-hour week the weekend women's right to vote Black's right to vote integration special benefits for veterans all of this while they wrap themselves in the flag and tell us what America is
14:34 so you remember that the next time someone pulls out the liel by label card and trots out tired meaningless cliches about liberalism and their Doctrine ask them what they stand for not what they stand against what they stand for and if all they can come up with is some lame BS about a family values world where the family is white and wealthy and the values are something something you decree while driving your Humvee to the golf course then ask them to please keep
15:03 driving that Humvee over the Mexican border and out of our country because there ain't an America because that's not an America I would send my sons to die for look around at yourselves right now all of you this is America you you're America you're truly its best and its brightest because you had to work for your education because you know that
15:36 just getting this education means someone in the state empathized with you without ever meeting you and you have to give that empathy back you're America and you're white and you're black and you're toffee colored and you're Asian and indo-asian Slavic American with a Frenchman somewhere back in the wood pile you are your parents and their parents and they worked hard so their offspring could work hard so that you could be born here and go to this school
16:05 and graduate with all the other Offspring who can trace their ancestry back to Northern Europe or the Russian steps or Honduras or Manchuria or Yemen or the Dutch Antilles and every single place in between anytime you engage on looking down on anyone categorizing anyone for any reasons to do with race class sexual preference and anytime you presuppose that you know best for a population that you share little in common with then you have disengaged
16:35 from empathy and lack of empathy ladies and gentlemen is unamerican so take your hopes so take your hopes and your dreams out into the world take your intellect which has been finally honed here I hope but don't forget your hearts don't forget your compassion don't forget your honor and don't forget your empathy thank you very
17:27 much