Nothing to me is sweeter than the tears of a clown.

Weird.

Cosby was my college commencement speaker, also.

I actually didn't attend my own c0mmencement, but that is another story. Had nothing to do with Cosby.

Cosby actually caused quite a stir, the day before commencement, in a speech he gave to a number of black student athletes. The gist of Cosby's speech was about personal responsibility and achievement. One of the ND football players had a question for him after the speech, and in the ensuing discussion, Cosby asked him what his grades were -- the athlete had something like a 2.5 average, if memory serves. Cosby told him something to the effect that that wasn't anything special, and that he needed to work harder -- he was somewhat dismissive of the guy. This caused a fair amount of outrage on campus because the guy was from a broken home, poverty, terrible inner city school, etc., and his story was usually portrayed as being akin to the story of Rudy. He worked his ass off and graduated from Notre Dame, and a lot of people weren't happy that Cosby (who didn't know the kid's whole story) downplayed what he managed to achieve. It was a news story for a day or two.

By all accounts his speech at the commencement was a good one.

Found the story. Athlete was Dean Brown.

http://www.blueandgold.com/content/printversion.cfm?aid=662

It so happened that one of his daughters was a classmate of mine at the Glorious People's Soviet of Middletown. He started his speech with, "Class of 1987.....Big deal." and developed the theme that, despite our belief that we were Something Special, we were all going to go out and face reality, i.e., get over ourselves and get a job. That didn't sit especially well with some of the students and the class president offered what amounted to a rebuttal in his own speech.

I don't remember much else except that I enjoyed Cos's speech. And, of course, that he was perfectly right.

What I remember about the speech was he did this bit about how great graduation day was, how everybody was so proud etc etc but you damn well better not be out cutting your folks front lawn wearing your cap and gown a month from now. Memory serves it was pretty hilarious, but then what I thought was funny and what 95% of the campus thought was funny rarely overlapped.

I was supposed to be class of 1987 also, but took a detour that ended me up in the class of 1990. Also a rather long story.

I also generally think Cosby is on the money, though he is no diplomat.

His albums are great -- classic humor.