This is powerful stuff. Somebody emailed me a copy of Walter Cronkite’s 2004 commencement address at Pomona University. It contained some pretty blunt observations, such as:<\/p>\n
We are plagued with the Iraq war — a possibly improving economy — but still a tragically large population of unemployed or under-employed — and an environmental crisis that threatens the Earth…
\nWe have an administration in Washington that has brought us to this condition — and we have a Democratic candidate presumptive who so far has proposed few remedies that offer any specifics that, to this observer at least, promise the necessary new deal in Washington…
\nBut the Kerry camp may well have been buffaloed by President Bush\u2019s oft-repeated pledge that we won\u2019t \u201ccut and run\u201d from Iraq…
\nIs it possible that the \u201ccut and run\u201d stigma has so intimidated the Democratic candidate that he can\u2019t muster the courage to acknowledge that we must leave Iraq and to offer a plan to expedite the departure with honor?<\/p><\/blockquote>\nMy urban legend alarm rang immediately. The internet is full of bogus commencement speeches that were never made. But I did a quick search and found the full text<\/a> of the speech on Pomona College’s website, among other places. That’s proof enough for me. It’s real. And it’s worth reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is powerful stuff. Somebody emailed me a copy of Walter Cronkite’s 2004 commencement address at Pomona University. It contained some pretty blunt observations, such as: We are plagued with the Iraq war — a possibly improving economy — but still a tragically large population of unemployed or under-employed — and an environmental crisis that… Continue reading Cronkite at Pomona<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-gV","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}