Jon Lovett, former presidential speechwriter for Barack Obama and co-founder of the political media company Crooked Media, delivered a sharp and funny commencement address at Pitzer College. He framed the speech around a single theme: the threat of dishonesty in public and private life, and the power of calling it out. Lovett borrowed F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous formulation — 'the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time' — and applied it to the specific challenge facing new graduates. They would inevitably encounter moments where their fresh perspective was genuinely valuable, and other moments where they were simply wrong because they were 23 and should 'shut up and listen to somebody who's been around the block.' He illustrated this with self-deprecating honesty: as a speechwriter for Hillary Clinton's campaign, he once wrote a speech about the financial system that caused the Dow to drop 200 points. Later, co-creating a TV show with no experience writing dialogue, he cringed at moments when his inexperience showed through. The lesson was that confidence and humility aren't mutually exclusive — they're both necessary.