I've sort of outgrown the desire to post "Yeah, me too!" in response to individual stupidity like Ms. Nooyi's speech to Columbia MBAs, but this time, I have a few things I'd like to say.
About a boycott of PepsiCo, I have to go along with Big Dog:
...if I stopped buying stuff from every company that was run by or contained some idiot who said stuff I disagreed with or that was just plain stupid, I'd be hand-making everything.
Besides, PepsiCo wouldn't miss me. I fry chicken better than KFC and their gravy sucks, we seldom buy chips, I grew up in SW Colorado and Taco Bell's "flavor" of Mexican food doesn't appeal to me, we order pizza about once a year, and I brew my own caffeine.
That being said, when I do face spending money for something PepsiCo sells, I'll probably remember the speech. If there's a reasonable alternative available, and there likely will be, I'll probably choose the non-PepsiCo brand.
Another point I'd like to make is that Ms. Nooyi showed a remarkable lack of cultural understanding and sensitivity toward the U.S. and the rest of the world with her analogy of the hand and it's five fingers. To do so while encouraging Americans not to behave boorishly when on business abroad was... amazing.
Hopefully, Bill Clinton's commencement address to the Columbia MBAs will be an uplifting and enjoyable experience for them. I don't think he could fail to make it so. No matter what you think of his politics, his ability to deliver a speech well is seldom questioned.
As Donald Sensing put it, bias aside it was a lousy speech. However, I think it's more useful to compare Ms. Nooyi with her contemporaries in the business and graduation speech-making world, than with General MacArthur. We are not then left with the idea that things have regressed quite so badly in either field over the past 40 years.
This time last year, I was the proud Mama at two commencement ceremonies, and both speeches were inspiring and better than I anticipated them being. More importantly, neither made me angry and I think Ms. Nooyi's would have done just that.
One happened to also be to MBAs, these from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business. There, Herb Kelleher, the founder and chairman of Southwest Airlines, wasn't quite as funny as Jon Stewart had been the week before at The College of William and Mary, but he had his moments.
Though Kelleher broke the rule about signaling the end of his speech, his speech was inspiring, and informative. His deep, rumbling, voice and elegantly secure stage presence would probably have inspired if he'd chosen to recite Jabberwocky. Read his remarks here.
Jon Stewart, on the other hand, presented an entirely different image. He wore the elegant W&M doctoral robe open over a t-shirt and jeans with sneakers, inspiring jealousy, if anything, from the W&M grads who had to keep theirs zipped.
I was a little concerned that he'd get political in his remarks, and he did. I was also not that thrilled that a celebrity, a comedian, for pete's sake, was going to metaphorically send them on their way. But he expressed his distress with the current political situation with grace, completely lacking in any kind of anti-Americanism and offered an inspiring goal and plan for life. You can read the whole thing here for all the humor, but here's the inspiring part, where he too breaks the rule about signaling the end of the talk:
College is something you complete. Life is something you experience. So don’t worry about your grade, or the results or success. Success is defined in myriad ways, and you will find it, and people will no longer be grading you, but it will come from your own internal sense of decency which I imagine, after going through the program here, is quite strong…although I’m sure downloading illegal files…but, nah, that’s a different story.
Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. And let the chips fall where they may.
And the last thing I want to address is the idea that somehow this new generation is not as prepared for the sacrifice and the tenacity that will be needed in the difficult times ahead. I have not found this generation to be cynical or apathetic or selfish. They are as strong and as decent as any people that I have met. And I will say this, on my way down here I stopped at Bethesda Naval, and when you talk to the young kids that are there that have just been back from Iraq and Afghanistan, you don’t have the worry about the future that you hear from so many that are not a part of this generation but judging it from above.
