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Opinion: Basic cable host Conan O’Brien delivers a commencement address for the ages

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By tradition, college commencement addresses are supposed to be brief, serious, self-important and eminently forgettable because the diplomas are coming real soon. (Quick! Who spoke at your graduation?)

By all these counts, late-night comedian Conan O’Brien failed the other day at Dartmouth College.

Which is what makes his 23-minute oration so memorable and funny and human. Amid all the relevant and self-deprecating silliness, O’Brien also managed to share a significant slice of himself and to impart a valuable lesson to the more than 1,700 graduates, family, friends and, as O’Brien put it, those old folks who just like to come to these things.

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Who cares about Dartmouth. That was just the setting for a memorable speech by someone now starring on basic cable.

There’s a smidge of politics in his remarks. But even if there wasn’t we’d highly recommend you give this video a view.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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