From a Washington Post column by Nancy Gibbs headlined “At Harvard, Tom Hanks offered an increasingly rare moment of grace”:

Commencement speeches are trampolines, elevating and entertaining with just enough risk to keep things interesting. So many ways to go wrong — faux erudition from civilians, faux folksiness from scholars, a trap for try-hards who would be crushed to know how few graduates remember a word that was said on graduation day. And usually, that’s no great loss.