Published: May 13, 2008 09:57 pm            

The toughest job? Giving a commencement speech

MUSKOGEE, Okla. — Commencement speeches are not easy to give.

I don’t say that because I’ve given them. I know that because I’ve listened to plenty of them. And commencement speakers should be required to apply for a license to speak.

Those who cannot tell a joke, those who tell the same jokes over and over, or those who cannot inspire and encourage creatively should not be able to get a commencement speaker license.

Gov. Brad Henry should not be allowed to get a commencement speaker license.

I’m sorry. You may think a lot of our governor.

He may be popular — that’s how news sources described Henry after he endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination a couple of weeks ago.

Henry is popular. Oklahoma’s economy has improved during his administration. It doesn’t matter whether he’s had anything to do with it or not — he’s still popular. Things have gone well the last six years and he hasn’t embarrassed us like New York’s former governor, Eliot Spitzer, embarrassed his state. And Henry doesn’t do what our last governor, Frank Keating, did frequently, put his foot in his mouth.

That’s probably why Henry was asked to speak at the morning graduation ceremony at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater on May 3.

But as I’ve said at times before, God bless his heart, Henry is about as exciting as a bag of rice cakes. That’s why he should not have a commencement speaker license.

First, at the OSU commencement, Henry told a joke I’ve heard from him a couple of other times.

A speaker has to be careful about recycling jokes.

This is how his joke goes.

One of his daughters tells people she’s the governor’s daughter. The girl’s mother tells her that she’s her own person and her identify doesn’t have to be tied to her father. So Brad Henry’s out somewhere, and an old lady compliments him on the job he’s doing. Then the old lady says to the daughter, “And you must be the governor’s daughter?”

The daughter says, no, her mother says she isn’t.

OK, it’s a good story, but even good stories get old.

And I don’t want to start anything, but there’s an old joke that I’ve heard pastors tell in churches about their daughters. It’s the same joke that Brad Henry tells.

The pastor’s wife tells her daughter that she doesn’t have to identify herself as the pastor’s daughter, and of course, like Brad Henry, one day that child responds to a questioner that her mother says she isn’t the pastor’s daughter.

From there, Henry said the things you’d expect in a commencement speech: blah, blah, blah, these are exciting times, give back to make a better life for others, a quote from a Persian poet, a Chinese proverb, and finally, God bless you and God bless Oklahoma.

I’m sure Gov. Henry is a nice person. He would make a good neighbor. He would be quiet, and he would keep his grass mowed and hedges trimmed. He’d probably be polite even though I might let my grass and hegdes go wild.

But God bless his heart ...

Garry Trudeau said, "Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated."

Trudeau’s line is humorous, and of course, the basis of its humor — commencement speeches usually are dull — is even more true.

David Gerard writes for the Muskogee (Okla.) Phoenix. He can be reached at dgerard@muskogeephoenix.com.