. . . is that they are incapable of recognizing which genre is appropriate to which occasion.
At our Graduation Ceremony today, our alumna who recently received the Pulitzer Prize for her achievements in investigative journalism was giving a speech.
“Out of each 4 of you,” she said, addressing our graduates, “2 will find jobs in your chosen field, 1 will find an unqualified job where your degree will be of no use, and 1 will remain unemployed and will have to return to Mom’s and Dad’s basement.”
We awaited some sort of a punch line but it never came. I can just imagine how this journalist toasts people at their weddings by reciting them the statistics on divorce.
As an investigative journalist, she probably forgot that not every occasion calls for sad revelations and unpleasant statistics.
Clarissa's Blog 
An audience of graduating college students (few thousand?) is a big enough sample that one of them would probably die this year. I’m surprised she overlooked this fact. Bad journalist!
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Omg what a terrible thing to say as a graduation speech. Even if it’s true, it’s still not very appropriate to just state like that for the occasion.
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What a downer!
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As my mother, who grew up poor in a tiny town in Tennessee during the Depression, would say: “You pore thang!” (That’s sarcasm Southern style. She might also say “Bless her heart” to drive the knife in a little deeper.)
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I find the candor refreshing.
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