This has been getting much attention since the weekend, but it should get more. There’s been a lot of focus on what happened when West Point made the frankly poor choice to ask the current shitmouthed dictator wannabe of the United States to deliver its commencement speech.
Had they seen him speak before? Were they familiar with his work?
The fact that he started telling old-timey fuck stories about real estate developers and their “trophy wives” is mild. He babbled about how he’s getting drag queens and transgender people out of the military, to zero applause. He babbled about his election victory. He babbled and babbled and babbled, because this is a dictator wannabe who thinks he doesn’t need speechwriters.
You read this transcript and try to make sense of the dementia. You can’t.
But then there was Scott Pelley this weekend, CBS News’s Scott Pelley to be precise. Scott Pelley from “60 Minutes,” the same “60 Minutes” Trump has been rubbing his sicko fascist anal glands all over, trying to force it to submit to his will.
Scott Pelley has been reading his own employer Paramount for filth on air for its pathetic capitulations to Trump for the sake of Shari Redstone’s precious desired merger. Now it was his turn to address a group of graduates, specifically Wake Forest class of 2025.
And oh boy, did he!
Did you already watch this in tabs? Oh well, guess you have to watch it in this post too. (Here’s the full transcript for you to read along with.)
“I fear there are some people in the audience who don’t want to hear what I have to say today,” said Pelley, winding up. “But I appreciate your forbearance in this small act of liberty.”
America needs you, he told these graduates. Because “in this moment — this moment, this morning — our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack. An insidious fear is reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes and into our private thoughts. The fear to speak. In America? If our government is — in Lincoln’s words — ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’ — then why are we afraid to speak?”
He told them about graduates who didn’t choose their history, but who were chosen by it. He told them about heroes like Volodymyr Zelenskyy. (But not Vladimir Putin for some reason! Also he spent literally no time talking about the late great Hannibal Lecter or any of the new words he’s invented lately, like “groceries” and “equalize.”)
He told the graduates why the petty tyrants are going after journalists, why America’s stupid Hitlers thrive on the people’s ignorance:
Did you hear that phrase in the Declaration? “Pursuit of truth”? Why attack universities? Why attack journalism? Because ignorance works for power.
First, make the truth seekers live in fear. Sue the journalists. For nothing. Then send masked agents to abduct a college student, a writer of her college paper who wrote an editorial supporting Palestinian rights, and send her to a prison in Louisiana and charge her with nothing. Then, move to destroy law firms that stand up for the rights of others.
With that done, power can rewrite history. With grotesque, false narratives, they can make heroes criminals and criminals heroes. And they can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality.
“Diversity” is now described as “illegal.” “Equity” is to be shunned. “Inclusion” is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends. There is nothing new in this. George Orwell — who we met on the street in London — in 1949, he warned of what he called “new speak.” He understood that ignorance works for power.
But it is ignorance that you have repudiated every single day here at Wake Forest University. Who are you? I think we know.
And he quoted former Wake Forest professor Maya Angelou:
“You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies.
You may tread me into the very dirt, but like dust, I’ll rise.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise.
Into a daybreak that’s wonderfully clear, I rise.
Bringing the gifts my ancestors gave me, I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise.
I rise.
I rise.”
Yes, it was a very good commencement speech.
And the reviews are in! Some sneering interchangeables on Fox News didn’t like it, and neither did some hacky bitch writing for the New York Post, but all God’s people who actually contribute something of value to the world loved it.
Kayleigh McEnany, perhaps the most interchangeable of all the Fox News windsocks, wants Pelley arrested for it.
Ooh, they mad.
But you know what other commencement speech Fox News is mad at? Click this link to see human participation trophy Riley Gaines speak from the land of fifth place about why she’s upset Kermit the Frog spoke at the University of Maryland’s commencement.
Riley Gaines and Kayleigh McEnany and Fox News can eat a bag of go fuck yourself on the bottom rung of hell, is what we’re saying. So can all the other whinyass loser MAGA pigfucks so outraged about it, bless their irrelevant discard pile hearts.
Scott Pelley wins commencement speeches and Donald Trump loses.
Kick the fascists in the dick, class of 2025. America needs you to do that.
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"They're attacking free speech "
"He should be arrested for saying that "
"See "
PAY ATTENTION, DEMS!!!