Why They Hate Us

Students walking from UT-Austin's School of Communications had a memorable graduation ceremony – just not in the way they expected. More in a "diplomatic incident" fashion.

The department had decided to pick a high-profile alumnus to deliver the commencement speech at the Frank Erwin Center Friday, but rather than getting a journalist, they picked former James Oberwetter, U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He then proved that diplomacy may be dead.

In a slow, stumbling, and stilted speech, Oberwetter decided to crack a funny about how much graduation robes look like the traditional clothing of his former residency – the men's thawb and the female hijab. Oberwetter then said he'd spent four years avoiding wearing such garb and that living in Saudi was like being in a nation of "salt and pepper pots." And lo, the sound of jaws dropping could be heard across the land.

For those that recognize the name, Oberwetter began as a water-carrier for the Texas GOP in the early Seventies and then became a firm Bush camp follower. He started as press secretary for then-Rep. George H. W. Bush and in 1996 was made chairman of the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse by then-Gov. George Bush. He's also an oil man associated with hawks, having spent three decades with Dallas-based Hunt Consolidated Inc., an oil firm whose founder, Ray L. Hunt, now sits on the boards of Halliburton and arch-neocon think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies.