Stephen Colbert Commencement Speech

This week in my communications class, we are learning more about speech delivery and how it helps made the speech more audience centered. I chose to write about the strengths and weaknesses of his speech at the commencement for the class of 2013 at the University of Virginia.

Now, we all know Steven Colbert is a hilarious man. He has his own show The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. So we all know he has the humor, but can he pull off a nearly 18 minute speech?

Colbert has many strengths to the speech. Of course, he is a master of the art of telling a joke. Timing and delivery is key and he always nails it. My favorite parts were when he would talk about something serious like,
"You don't owe the other generation anything. Because of us you now owe the Chinese."
He always paused correctly for a joke and when making a statement of importance generally pauses afterward to let the audience reflect on what was said.

He tried to be audience centered by bringing up references to traditions, campus hangouts, rankings, and high quality of education, while making fun of himself the whole time. He had applied to U of Va. but was not accepted. He is great at poking fun at himself and at others with out offending others.

Also I noticed he made sure to make eye contact at the ends of sentences and for important parts of the speech he began to make more motions with his hands while making chopping sort of motions.

To be more realistic, there were many flaws to his speech. Often his humor saved the speech, but the speech was disorganized and didn't seem to have a purpose. He started out saying good morning, which is not a strong opening statement. He then went on and thanked people while making jokes about himself and the people positions. It seemed to take awhile until he finished. Plus he added in this joke about leave your phones on and check my twitter, which he did tweet during the commencement. I was getting bored and wondered where he was going. Now I know he talked often about the school, the traditions, and more but these people already know that. They don't need the whole speech to be about how great the school is and facts about the school, because they attended and graduated. Most people are aware of their schools history.

In addition to the unnecessary compliments he often looked down a lot as he read what was on his papers. I thought he would try and look up more to give us more facial expressions and make the jokes funnier. Also I noticed when he transitioned they didn't seem to flow or he abruptly announced it like, "Now as I move into the advice section."It also took him almost 10 minutes to get to any sort of section let alone advice.

The most confusing moment was all the quote reading in the end. I could not tell what was a quote from what he was saying. I also didn't understand the point of the quote. I tried to rewind it back and listen again, and I still didn't understand the point.

Overall, Stephen Colbert's humor saved his speech. I don't think many people in the audience will remember what he discussed 5 or 10 years from now. It's a shame because he has the abilities to be a great speech writer. If only he had prepared a purpose, an outline, and spent more time on the speech.