HEVESI'S HICCUP

Last Thursday, the Queens College class of 2006 withstood perhaps the most grueling of all modern rites of passage: the interminable commencement ceremony. Thirty-five hundred graduates, along with their friends and family, were forced to sit outside in full dress on a muggy morning in Flushing as school bigwigs and local politicians wasted hours going through the motions and stumbling through their speeches. Chuck Schumer's talk proved surprisingly boring, even for him, as one audience member noted that he repeated an anecdote he had used at another Queens College graduation three years earlier. The crowd was yawning its way through State Comptroller Alan Hevesi's speech as well, until, ad-libbing, he jokingly referred to Schumer as the man who "will put a bullet between the president's eyes if he could get away with it," as quoted in the New York Post. The remark was embarrassing enough to momentarily distract the audience members from their own conversations, and forced Hevesi to offer quick and profuse apologies to the senator, the president and the graduates later that day. Schumer immediately put the matter behind him, and the Secret Service has yet to open any investigation. As of this writing, however, no one has apologized for the acoustic version of "Turn! Turn! Turn!" that closed the ceremony.