On Saturday night, C-SPAN aired the May 21 commencement address of New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., at the State University of New York at New Paltz. As covered previously in TimesWatch, Sulzberger showed off his unvarnished liberaism by "apologizing" to the graduates for his generations' failiure to make such "fundamental human rights" as gay marriage, abortion, and uncontrolled immigration the law of the land.
Here's a sample of Sulzberger's address, which the MRC's Brent Baker corrected against the published text of his remarks:
I’ll start with an apology.
When I graduated from college in 1974, my fellow students and I had just ended the war in Vietnam and ousted President Nixon [light cheering]. Okay, okay, that's not quite true. I mean yes, the war did end and yes, President Nixon did resign in disgrace but maybe there were larger forces at play.
Either way, we entered the real world committed to making it a better, safer, cleaner, more equal place. We were determined not to repeat the mistakes of our predecessors. We had seen the horrors and futility of war and smelled the stench of corruption in government.
Our children, we vowed, would never know that.
So, well, sorry [pause and applause]. It wasn't supposed to be this way.
You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land [louder applause].
You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it's the rights of immigrants to start a new life; or the rights of gays to marry; or the rights of women to choose [applause].
You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain.
You weren't. But you are. And for that I'm sorry.
