In a sidebar to today’s article on the difficulties of being a commencement speaker, USA Today heavily whitewashed last year’s fiasco at N.C. State:

Talk-show pioneer Phil Donahue was booed when he asked students to “bring America back to basic constitutional values” and to stress civility rather than a “trend to the sword.”

Merciful heavens, those loutish N.C. State grads! Right? Not quite ? our own Baker Mitchell was in attendance, and here’s his eyewitness report ? on which I relied heavily (hope you don’t mind, Baker) in the letter I sent to USA Today.

Now, judging by the large amount of letters USA Today says it receives daily, I figure I have a better chance of being insulted by a left-handed, tenured conservative sociologist than seeing it in print, so I’m publishing it here:

Susan O’Brian’s description May 13 of Phil Donahue being booed during last year’s commencement address at North Carolina State University was highly misleading. O’Brian made it sound as if N.C. State graduates booed Donahue for asking them to “bring America back to basic constitutional values” and stressing civility over a “trend to the sword.” The fact is Donahue was insulting to the region, the parents, and the ceremony from the minute he began his talk. He began with a complaint that he had not been able to find another liberal to talk with since arriving in Raleigh and joked that after his talk he would go into witness protection. Again, these were in his opening comments. He then accused the parents of trampling the U.S. Constitution, citing several “violations,” including his “loss” of speech rights when he lost his cable show. He then appealed to the students to uphold the Constitution by becoming liberals. He continued in this vein throughout the speech, concluding with a bizarre admonition to be liberal and teach Darwinian evolution. In other words, the boos were prompted by his silly politicization of the commencement, his disrespect for the ceremony, not the two innocent-sounding quotations O’Brian used. As N.C. State Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said afterwards, “I share your disappointment in Phil Donahue’s address to our graduates on Saturday. Mr. Donahue chose instead to use our ceremonies as a platform for a speech better suited for a political audience.”