Today’s (May 12) New York Times carries an article written by Arthur Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute under the title, “How to avoid commencement clichés”.
The author says:
“When I asked my 20-something colleagues (about commencement speech), they warned me that, while this might sound great to a baby boomer at the podium, to a millennial audience it’s just product advice. It sounds more or less like the famous unsolicited counsel in the 1967 movie “The Graduate,” in which a middle-aged businessman told the young Ben Braddock: “I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Plastics.”
So here’s my advice for anyone asked to give a commencement speech: Avoid plastics; put purpose ahead of product; emphasize sanctification and service. Also, keep it under 30 minutes.” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/opinion/how-to-avoid-commencement-cliches
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I can associate the word “plastics” only with (1) synthetic resins, (2) credit card as a noun, (3) elastic, flexible as an adjective, and with no moral significance.
What does “plastics” that was dubbed as a cliché here mean?