Knox in the News

From the Washington Post:

NBC hopes the denouement of the Booker-O’Brien kerfuffle attracts a lot of viewers — both to the Friday broadcast and its online afterlife. To some extent it will depend on how well Booker performs. When Booker’s good — as when he appeared on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show on election night in 2008 — he’s very, very good. But when he’s bad — as when he appeared on “The Colbert Report” on Sept. 14 to plug “Brick City” — he’s horrid.

Conan’s feud with Booker is similar to the one Colbert ginned up in 2007 when he threatened to burn his honorary doctorate of fine arts that Knox College awarded him when he gave the school’s commencement address the previous year. On his show he said he would torch the document on air if the school bestowed the same honor on Bill Clinton.

A faux feud erupted; Knox College President Roger Taylor finally offered to go on Colbert’s show to explain the difference between Colbert’s degree and Clinton’s. And, in his commencement speech, Clinton spoke thusly:

“When Lincoln ran for president in 1860, the truth is that’s why he got this honorary degree. Your college was trying to help him get elected and you wanted to give him a little boost. One hundred forty-six years later, you gave Stephen Colbert a degree to give his ratings a boost. That’s what Al Gore now calls an assault on reason.”

From statepress.com (Arizona State University):

It’s May 2010. You’re a senior and you’ve just completed your last final. You’re ready to graduate, but is it worth it to sit in the hot sun, listening to a commencement speaker tell you about your college triumphs and tribulations?

If the speaker is Stephen Colbert, heck yes.

After spending endless semesters listening to professors lecture for hours on end, it’s not a surprise that many graduates usually choose to forego the general commencement ceremony.

This trend was turned around last year when approximately 70,000 people filled Sun Devil Stadium in anticipation of President Barack Obama’s commencement address. This probably does not come as a big surprise — he is, after all, the president of the United States.

So, who better to be the follow-up to the leader of the free world than the supreme leader of the Colbert Nation?

After a couple of opinion columns on the subject, The State Press has received more letters to the editor this semester about the potential Colbert commencement speech than any (dare we say it) real issue, so we have decided to put our Word in.

We thought about it, and deduced that there is probably nothing that will get just-graduated college students out of bed and to a commencement ceremony better than Colbert……

Other than Colbert, those are the only people in our minds who could garner attendance to even remotely challenge that of the president.

The ceremony is meant to honor the graduates, but how is that effective if nobody — including the students — shows up?

Colbert is a comic on his TV show, “The Colbert Report,” and yes, audiences generally watch the show to chuckle. But, though a humorist, Colbert is more than just laughs. Before he can make fun of the news, he has to know it.

In 2006, he spoke at the graduation of Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. The speech was rife with humor but full of sound advice too.

This summer, he traveled overseas to host a show in an Iraqi palace full of U.S. troops. Was he mocking the troops? We think not.

We are unconvinced that Colbert will give less than congratulations to ASU graduates, even if he veils the sentiment with jokes and sarcasm.

From The Daily Advance (Elizabeth City, NC):

An unassuming 16-foot yellow powerboat with two 20-something sisters aboard stopped along the Elizabeth City waterfront Friday, drawing questions about a water-bound journey they launched in early June.

Their stop at the Harbor of Hospitality is part of a journey that began on the Illinois River and will take them north to the St. Lawrence in Vermont before ending sometime in August, back in Chicago, on what boaters call The Great Loop.

The sisters, Katie McPhail, 26, and Elizabeth McPhail, 22, are from Seattle, Wash. The siblings are not out to make a point about anything, sell a book, or even write one, they’re just having an adventure.

Older sibling Katie says she got the idea to travel The Great Loop after reading a book about a similar journey, “Only in America,” chronicling the journey of three college buddies along America’s eastern waterways.

“At the beginning of the trip, it was difficult,” says Katie, a part-time teacher. “Most of our (boating) experience was on a lake.”

The Great Loop is a boating journey that begins in Chicago, Ill., runs downriver through various waterways before pouring into the Mississippi River. From there, boaters will travel down through the Gulf of Mexico along the Florida coast, either going as far south as Key West, or cutting across the state through the Okeechobee Waterway before heading north.

The sisters took the latter route, cutting their time on the water short.

“One of the things we’re realizing is that we’re missing a lot of the loop,” says Katie. “Most people take a year to five years to complete it.”

When Katie conceived of this journey, her sister Elizabeth was a senior attending Knox College in Illinois. Their father, a boat manufacturer in Issaquah, Wash., had had a slow year and as a result had some leftover inventory. Katie says the 16-foot Duraboat fishing vessel was the largest boat in stock, so it was the obvious choice.

Katie trailored the boat to Chicago, attended her sister’s graduation on June 6, and on June 7 the two had launched the boat and set off on the trip of a lifetime.

From Destin.com (Destin, Florida):

Both taking the summer off from life, sisters Katie and Elizabeth McPhail found themselves in the same boat - headed on a 6,000 mile voyage on a watery path known as The Great Loop.

“The day after graduation, we got on the boat,” Elizabeth, 22, said.

The new grad walked off the platform at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., with a diploma in hand, and no real plans in mind. But Katie had an idea that led the girls and friend Sammy Almohandis, 22, to Destin for a couple of days.

“I first heard about the Great Loop earlier this year,” said Katie, a 26-year-old Issaquah, Wash., native.

The Great Loop is the circumnavigation of the Eastern United States by the waterways that divide it from the rest of the continent. ‘Loopers’ typically chart a course through the nation’s river systems, lakes and coastlines through the Intracoastal Waterway.

From WGIL radio:

U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, dropped a surprise statement in comments to the media following his commencement day address to the students of Knox College.

Fitzgerald is most recently known for his handing down federal indictment charges against now former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for allegedly plotting to sell an appointment to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by current President Barack Obama.

In meeting the press after his speech where he stressed service and sacrifice to students, said he wasn’t a big television watcher and is not currently watching Patti Blagojevich on the NBC reality show “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here”.

2009 marked the fifth year in a row a commencement speaker from the headlines accepted the invitation to give the graduation address to students and he tells WGIL the Knox graduation reminded him of his college days at Amhurst College in New York.

“I don’t go to too many graduations,” Fitzgerald said. “I went to a small liberal arts college, and it was a beautiful campus. And, I was struck, growing up in Brooklyn, when I went out to what was, to me, very rural Massachusetts, and the beauty of it and very nice people. My sense of the last 24 hours, being here, and taking to students and faculty, (Knox College) is a collegial place. People really believe in this institution.”

From WGIL radio:

A graduating senior says he had never even heard of Knox College when he got a letter in the mail from the school saying they were interested in him attending over four years ago.

Sean Bullock was the senior class speaker at the Knox commencement on Saturday and he says pressure from his mom was the reason he completed the application. Bullock says he had never heard of Knox, didn’t want to leave his Virginia home to come to Illinois, and quite frankly wasn’t even a fan of the color purple.

Bullock says those attitudes changed once he began to develop relationships with friends who had the same interests. Before his friendships developed, Bullock told the students and their families at the graduation, he asked a Knox student many questions before accepting to come to Galesburg, including one answer he says he’ll never forget.