President Clinton Avoids All Major Issues At MIT Commencement

Offers Typical 'Information Revolution' Spiel

      Defying current calls for leadership in Western government, President Clinton courageously avoided all major issues in an address to MIT graduates at the Class of 1998 Commencement ceremonies yesterday. Forced to choose a Boston area college at which to speak due to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's attendance at a function at Harvard University a day earlier, the President's finely honed political skills led him to determine that a speech praising technological literacy might be well received at MIT.

      Valiantly preaching to a gathering of more than 2,000 highly technologically literate graduates, Clinton stressed the importance of Internet access in secondary schools and pledged $180 million in federal funding over the next three years to ensure that American high school students have the same access to pornography as their more fortunate tertiary counterparts. Cleverly sidestepped was the more pressing issue of the abysmal state of the US secondary school system in general and the steady decline in basic literacy in particular, as were all other major issues both domestic and abroad.

      Pressing international issues ignored during the President's visit, which necessitated the closure of several major arterial traffic routes and forced many graduates and their families to arrive just after dawn for intrusive security searches, included the US's stumbling effort to discover its future purpose as the only global superpower, the continuing efforts to place corporate and nationalistic greed over the ability of the planet to support human habitation, the US government's tacit support of oppression and the denial of basic human rights in places such as Tibet and East Timor, and the economic crisis in Asia threatening an Asia-Pacific depression.

      The assembled crowd found Clinton's ability to ignore national issues, however, even more impressive. The widening disparity in the criminal justice system between the rich and the poor, the steady erosion of personal freedom and the US Constitution, out-of-control federal law enforcement and the failure of the "War on Drugs", the bureacratic cancer currently crippling the US military, and the growing alienation of ordinary citizens against faceless corporations and government were just some of the domestic matters artfully skirted by the President in his address.

      "I was amazed," said one MIT student, who declined to be indentified, citing fear of violent raids under 'no-knock' federal search warrants. "I didn't think it was possible to mention access to information technology without even considering the complete inability the US has shown to properly handle the pervasive information technology it already has in the form of television, but Bill managed it without even breaking stride. I imagine it is only a matter of time before amoral corporations run the Internet in much the same mind-numbing, rigidly programmed fashion as they do the analog airwaves."

      "As a jaded graduate, I'm not supposed to like anything contemporary, but this is the best display of mealy-mouthed platitudes I've seen at MIT since Vice-President Gore spoke here in 1993," he added.

      Following his speech on the benefits of technology, Clinton planned to pay tribute to a man who became famous for living devoid of technology and society. As the Unabomber was not available due to incarceration, however, the President chose instead to attend the dedication of the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods near Lincoln, Mass.