Weekend entertainment: the partial transcript of Greta Van Susteren's interview with two students from Syracuse University who oppose the school's decision to invite Rudy Giuliani to speak at this year's commencement exercises. Giuliani turned down a lot of invitations to speak this year, but he accepted the one from Syracuse. You'd think Syracuse students would be honored to be chosen by the former mayor of New York City. But instead they are concerned for the damage he might do to their tender sensibilities.

Van Susteren grilled the Syracuse students about why they didn't want TIME magazine's Person of the Year to speak on their campus. Here are some of their more cogent reponses:

• "All right, the invitation of Giuliani as our commencement speaker stigmatizes the student body at Syracuse University."
• "Commencement is supposed to be a celebration of your accomplishments and your four years there. But Giuliani being there as a speaker is taking a lot of students and is making them marginalized. And to a sect of students who don't support him being there and are very against it, you're going to have this commencement where people are going to be standing up and protesting. ... You're going to have people protesting against the protests."
• "I think that at the university and at the academy we must look at the totality of somebody's works. And at a university that supports diversity and caring, we need to understand that throughout his administration he didn't support that."
• "Look at his record. So, you want to count one single incident of 9/11 as good enough for him to come? I don't think that's a good argument."
• "Giuliani represents a nationwide problem where you take policing and prisons and use that as a solution to all of society's ills. ... it doesn't get to the root of the issue. The problem is that in the land of the free, there are too many people who are in cages right now."

Are we in pain yet? If Van Susteren's grilling shows nothing else, it shows how murky is the thinking behind this student protest. If these two characters are its most articulate representatives, Syracuse has bigger problems than student unrest.

These two young men--elected student leaders as deadly earnest as they are irrational and inarticulate--can't explain why Giuliani is a bad choice. But they expect not to have to. Reading the transcript of the interview, it's clear they do not even recognize what Van Susteren is asking them to do: to justify their position logically, to put forth a reasoned argument against having Giuliani be the one to speak the inspiring words that launch this year's class into the future. What they do instead: mouth the platitudes of therapeutic multiculturalism. If Giuliani comes to campus, they claim, the student body will feel "stigmatized" and "marginalized." This is so because, unlike Syracuse University, Giuliani does not support "diversity and caring." Instead, he is emblematic of oppression: he "represents a nationwide problem." To certain student "sects" (cults? multicults?), Giuliani's actions in the wake of 9/11 were just "one single incident," and as such do not "count."

Ahhh. I love close reading. I totally understand now. Giuliani is an oppressor. His presence is therefore not only oppressive, but a symbol of Oppression itself. He cannot speak at Syracuse without wounding students. It doesn't matter what he says. The very fact of his speaking will "stigmatize" and "marginalize." His is an uncaring manner that is inherently hostile to diversity. Good students: you have learned the lessons of cultural sensitivity well. Sprinkle your talk with the buzzwords. Use said buzzwords to manufacture racism by accusation. Do not trouble to accuse only those who deserve it. Assign blame wherever you can. Blame white men. Blame images. Blame white men for being images. Hold fast to your outrage when it is challenged. And make sure you let those who disagree with you know that they, too, are insensitive, uncaring, and hostile to "diversity" (which you never bother to define). Syracuse should be proud. Or scared.

So who would these ambassadors of campus harmony recommend instead as a commencement speaker? "Someone who does not divide," they say. And who might that be? Either Bob Costas or Conan O'Brien, they say. Why? Because "no student would have really cared." Is this what it has come to? Graduating seniors about to embark on life in the world would rather have completely innocuous speakers--speakers who will either divert them with topical patter or treat the whole affair as a sporting event--than speakers who will challenge them to live up to their own hard-won wisdom?

I can see Costas now, with his mike and headset: "And here is graduating senior John Doe, major in economics, coming down the stage toward the dean ... he's closing in, he reaches out, and it's the hand off! He has the diploma! He's off! The field before him is clear ... he's making a great walk, heading straight for the end of the stage ... and he's clear! He scores! He graduates! [crowd roars; parents do wave]." Well, if it came to that, you couldn't really blame poor old Bob. Graduations do tend to take place in football stadiums. Such a setting can get pretty confusing for a veteran sportscaster such as himself.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for sentiment, but I think Syracuse would be hard-pressed to find a better commencement speaker than Giuliani. This is a man who knows a thing or two about leadership. He knows about higher purpose. He knows how to keep himself and his constituents together in times of crisis. He knows how to use words and gestures to turn mass panic into concentrated community cooperation. He knows how to channel the grief and anger and pain of his citizens into positive, focussed action. He knows how to create collective hope, how to guard and sustain communal belief. What he did in the aftermath of 9/11 was positively heroic. There is no other word for it, and there are few people who ever truly deserve to have that word applied to them. Surely the students at Syracuse would want to hear what such a man has to say about meeting life's challenges? Surely they would want to close out their college careers to something more lasting and substantial than the flip, ephemeral banter of professional conversationalists?

Not at all. Not in an era when even our presidents dream of being on TV when they grow up. If Bill Clinton can seriously aspire to become a talk show host after eight years in the Oval Office, Syracuse seniors can certainly look to late night personalities for guidance and inspiration. What more is there to life, after all, than a good suit, a ready wit, and a steady stream of celebrity guests whom you can mock or praise as you please? Add to that a nightly musical performance by a band eager to promote its new CD, and you've got professional heaven in an age of hollow expectation. Who needs a real live hero when you can get canned style?