Those forced to graduate from college and enter the cold and competitive Real World could do worse than have comedian Bill Cosby nudge them from their ivy-covered nest.
“You have this education. There are parents waiting for you to move out. They’ve been waiting for this day, and they don’t want you to back out,” Cosby told a church-full of graduating students and their families on Friday at the University of San Francisco’s commencement ceremony for the College of Arts and Sciences.
Laughter and applause pulsed through the Jesuit university’s grand St. Ignatius Church on Fulton Street, its stained-glass saints no doubt accustomed to more contemplative conventions.
Cosby’s larger message to graduates did not carry the controversial punch of his now famous speech in 2004, when he told the NAACP that “we cannot blame the white people anymore” for the troubles of the black community.