14 DAY TRIAL // Over the weekend, Conan O’Brien, Coco, brought on the laughs in a very odd yet still extremely funny and inspirational commencement speech address to the graduating class of 2011 of Dartmouth College.
You can see the entire address below, embedded at the end of the article.
Coco started off by pointing that he was from LA and had never suffered from cold to such an extent as he was suffering at the time he took to the podium.
Luckily, that did not affect his sense of humor, as he immediately announced that the topic of his address would be “Life Is Not Fair.” Case in point, his presence there.
The talk show host noted that while he, a television personality who wasn’t even that smart, got to do the commencement speech, a real-life hero and admirable public personality was sitting right behind him.
He was referring to President George H.W. Bush, in what he deemed the worst example of what is wrong with America today.
Of course, that was just the beginning.
“Today, you have achieved something special. Something only 92% of Americans your age will ever know – a college diploma. That’s right, with your college diploma, you now have a crushing advantage over 8% of the work force,” he said.
“I’m talking about dropout losers like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg,” O’Brien added, as the audience laughed and cheered him on.
Even though he didn’t go to Dartmouth himself, Coco believed he could identify with the graduates – and it wasn’t just because he made it a point of sitting on their chairs the night before either, just so he could say “I once sat where you are now sitting.”
“I take my task today very seriously. When I got the call two months ago to be your speaker, I decided to prepare with the same intensity many of you have devoted to an important term paper,” he said.
“So late last night, I began. I drank two cans of Red Bull, snorted some Adderall, played a few hours of Call of Duty, and then opened my browser,” Conan added.
“I think Wikipedia put it best when they said ‘Dartmouth College is a private Ivy League University in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States.’ Thank you and good luck,” he said in a booming voice.
With all his typical self-deprecating humor, O’Brien still managed to send the message across, besides delivering hearty laughs: yes, life is not fair and yes, dream may change by the time the graduates will get to see them come true, but that’s ok. That’s life.
Check out Conan’s address at Dartmouth College in full. *Please be advised that it contains some instances of mildly offensive language.