Author, former NBC anchor draws parallels between 'greatest generation,' current one
The Colonial Life Arena was packed Monday afternoon when suddenly, a flurry of camera flashes, cheering and applause exploded within its walls.
Was the men’s basketball team repeating its 2010 upset of Kentucky? Had Taylor Swift returned for an encore performance?
No, it was Tom Brokaw, the legendary former anchor of NBC Nightly News, stepping forward to congratulate USC’s 2,689 newest graduates and offer them his advice during the university’s winter commencement exercises.
Indeed, graduation is a joyful and exciting occasion – a time to celebrate the hard work of semesters past and graduates’ first step into the world at large – but, as Brokaw reminded them, this is a difficult time to make that step.
“In the past four years, you have been witness to the imperfections of the world we are about to give to you,” he said. “Many of you may have personally felt the pain of the most devastating economic recession since the Great Depression … [As you attended school,] so many others – all your age, all volunteers, most of them working class, lower-middle class – were in military uniform … in harm’s way in the two longest wars in our nation’s history.”
That, plus revolution in the Middle East, global climate change, population growth and a slew of other pressing issues, paints a bleak picture for these graduates.
So, Brokaw wondered, if seemingly counterintuitively, “What more could a generation ask?”
“We may not have given you a perfect world,” he said, “but we have given you an unparalleled opportunity for leaving a lasting legacy as a generation that is fearless and imaginative, tireless and selfless.”
Today’s situation, he said, recalls the predicament of young people in a group Brokaw dubbed “the greatest generation” in his book of the same name.
In the former half of the twentieth century, they sacrificed and scrimped their way through the Great Depression before they were hurled en masse across oceans to fight in World War II, or remained stateside to assist the war effort here.
That generation rose to the challenge, in Brokaw's words, "saving the world."
"They gave us nothing less than the freedoms we enjoy today," he said.
And such, he argued, is the challenge before this generation.
“I’m not going to paint some rosy picture and say that it’s a lot better out there than you think, because it is tough,” he told reporters earlier in the day. “I guess my enduring message to this graduating class and to this generation is that it’s really exciting, because you can leave a real imprint on history and you can address these problems.”
At commencement, he emphasized that making that imprint is not a responsibility reserved only for the powerful, the passionate or the wealthy, but instead a universal opportunity.
“Those who take an inventory of our time a hundred years from now, or a thousand, will not measure success or failure by the actions of President Obama or the Tea Party or Wall Street alone. We are all on the playing field now,” Brokaw said, before asking: “Where do we begin? That’s a decision each of you and collectively our country will make. [The answer] will be the most rewarding if it is rooted in personal passion and carried out with that passion and purpose.”
This is a generation especially endowed with information and connection, as social media, cellphones and the Internet’s wealth of knowledge have exploded across the country and the world, but, Brokaw argued, these are just tools, not replacements for true action or emotion.
“You will not solve global warming by hitting delete," he said. "You will not make society more just by cutting and pasting, and you should not surrender the essence of the human experience to 140 characters. …
“Martin Luther King, Jr. was just a few years older than you when he began his historic oral crusade against racial injustice. He moved this nation – and he liberated all of us, black and white – from the unconscionable weight of institutionalized and even legal racial segregation. Somehow he managed to do that without a cellphone, without a website, without a Facebook or a Twitter account.”