Obama's Naval Academy Commencement Address

Mostly because I really, really want President Obama to give the American University School of International Service commencement address in 2011 (and am therefore wholly in favor of linkages like this one), I've been paying close attention to Obama's commencement speeches this year, including today's address to the United States Naval Academy (full transcript available here). I actually liked the Notre Dame speech better because I thought its acknowledgment that, while some differences are irreconcilable, this recognition does not mean we should either eliminate differences in belief or default to absolute relativism but rather pursue our divergent beliefs "fair-mindedly" demonstrated an admirably sophisticated take on what Naeem Inayatullah and David Blaney call the "problem of difference." Today's speech, however, was more relevant to the pirate project, ending as it did with the following narrative of the Navy snipers' rescue of Captain Phillips of the Maersk Alabama:

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This is hardly the first time the president has publicly discussed piracy, however. I didn't write about it at the time, coming, as it did, in the flurry of final paper writing, but the White House Correspondents' Dinner included a pirate joke that made it clear that pirates are still a source of humor, even at the highest levels of government (go to 8:22):