Or James Wright's year-opening remarks as told by Dave Eggers.
Look at me, you motherf"""ers. Can you see me? Can you see me in my green satin gown with purple fringe thingy and a decidedly slimming effect? I am here and I am now and you will listen because I am the greatest college president in the world and you are all in the greatest college in the world. Except you, Larimore. You are in the second greatest college in the world.
Today the New Hampshire sky gleams in a perfect, soft azure like only God and Photoshop can make it. In a few months time the sky will turn cold and sackcloth-like when our bonfire rages and you all run, run around it because it's tradition and because you must and even though some of you may fall in and get burned and it will be a great ha-ha for the rest of us despite the insurance premiums we don't focus on that now because our job right off the bat is to emphasize THE BROMIDE-LADEN PANEGYRIC OF LIBERAL EDUCATION AS SELF-CONGRATULATORY BUT MISLEADING INTRODUCTORY SEGUE INTO THE CALL FOR GREATER IMPROVEMENT IN THIS OR THAT SOCIAL/INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, SUCH AS HAZING, ASPECT. So let's get started, shall we?
I observe you there from my crushed velvet throne of administrative magnificence, I can see you are all individual persons as opposed to several-persons-in-one which would be bad and awkward. No. You are all individual persons and you are smart and capable and you worked hard for this because you were owed even if your great-grandfather went here and built a library and goddamn it this feels so good that you're here, you brilliant, brilliant motherf"""ers. You will be large and do great things for this community or you will you be small and slip into the roiling chaos of your own solipsism, you selfish bastards. Here is a picture for an I-banker. [Note to self: extend middle finger.] But either way this is the gauntlet thrown down before you whether you like it or not since the measure of your worth started 30 seconds ago and will continue for the rest of your puny, f"""ing little lives.
I am reminded of something my wife told me as we were sock-sliding across the expansive wood floors of my presidential palace -- you'll see that later if your parents paid extra -- when she said to me: "Jimmy ... (To my wife I am Jimmy) Jimmy, what about how it's weird to be white because even though you notice how other people sometimes aren't, you don't really see yourself as quote-unquote white like those other people do?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know, the politics of race, the psycho-social toll that the privileged obliviousness of the homogenous 'us' takes on the sectarian heterogeneous 'other,' especially among younger segments of the population. Vis--vis college life, etc."
"Oh."
"I'm not really your wife, you know."
"No?"
"No. You've reduced me to breaking the fourth wall for your own explication of your convocation remarks. And all this mock impassioned chest-pounding as paradoxical device for thrusting these culturally sensitive issues into the fore and challenging the status quo, not to mention the students' perception of you as a future dead white male who doesn't give a s""" All this gimmickry. Here is a picture for an I-banker, etc. I don't think what? What are you laughing at?"
"The Sigma Nu kids are peeing off the ledge-thingy again, right into your rhododendron patch."
"--."
My wife is speaking to me and I am loving it, loving the potential for my self-projection to these freshmen as a not-afraid-to-jump-right-in-there-and-tackle-the-difficult-and-sensitive-global-issues type of guy while at the same time subtly announcing to everyone a shift in my presidential agenda from failed Greek system-termination to can't-we-all-just-get-along-and-be-aware-of-our-whiteness-campaigning. This works well with my new groomed Marcus Aurelius facial hair. I even have this technique I do where I broach the what-the-f"""? expression-yielding subject of race identity in America while drawing relevance from recent campus debate and a controversial senior thesis about that very thing. (I reference a senior society-sponsored colloquium but not a fraternity-sponsored one because that fraternity has mocked the new facial hair and its basement smells like urine.)
I have this one bit where, OK: I cite statistics about the minority percentages of certain parts of the country, then swing around midair to land on the idea that stereotypes are wrong while catching cosmic harmony and peace between Israelis and Palestinians under my leg from behind because I am that f"""ing good. I tell you Dartmouth is a place for honest, engaging discourse but that is because you will believe it because you have just returned from the soul-cleansing milieu of the DOC outdoors and have yet to be exposed to our Op-Ed section. I express confidence in your abilities to impress me, the faculty and wealthy Trustees even though few of you will actually be that cool and fewer still Phi Beta Kappa cool and thus worthy of my selective attention wherein I lavish "job well done" praise upon my Oedipal surrogate sons and daughters who have sought it, hungered for it for so f"""ing long. I am the big kahuna figurehead. Oh and it is a big, monumentally big head, you spiteful monsters.
I will bring the sore, infected wound of national, international racial discord to the Green as my first hey-what's-up of this year and I will do it like no other. I will launch that motherf"""ers into the stratosphere from this podium and it will descend with all the force of a thousand normative judgments crash landing in a vat of my own good conscience borne of experienced, harried leadership. I can reference a few patrilineal humble origins of my own to show you that you are not alone -- or is it I am not alone? -- and that bigotry and hate is f"""ing dumb because we are all an interconnected lattice, pumping blood from one rich, white Govy major listening to Barry Manilow because it's great -- especially that Mandy song -- to the next bisexual Latino Postcolonial Studies major listening to Barry Manilow because it's ha-ha.
Then I run at you, slapping my shoulder for no apparent reason other than to distract you from the artificial earnestness of my speech, and dive headlong into the original optimistic hope with which I began here today in saying that you are all wonderful and brilliant and openminded and ready to learn and embrace this hope with me because I am asking you nicely and I have these great quotes from cool women poets and authors and I have suffered so long for all of you f"""ers, standing here before you, hat in my hand, with arms raised in mock-solemnity because I am so tired and I've been so old for so long and my sciatica's acting up and -- that's right, do it you heartless motherf"""ers, do it fast and furious right through me, do it, do it, finally, finally.
Welcome to Dartmouth!
