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[P]
Donald Rumsfeld... the Poet?

By circletimessquare in MLP
Sat Apr 12, 2003 at 12:31:06 PM EST
Tags: Humour (all tags) 		Humour

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
-Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

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Props to Hart Seely of Slate. Text here is original. But all poems were collected by him, and the idea is his. Let's open source and expand upon his great idea.

See Slate for more poems.

pb contributes these links for you to create your own Rumsfeld Haiku:
A Perl Module for Haiku generation.
Rumsfeld quotes aplenty.

The Department of Defense has lots of Rumsfeld Ruminations as well.

No text here, but classic soundbites from the BBC rocks.

Good job brainyquote.com. Lots of good working material. Everyone should find a nascent poem here.

Post any gems you find in the brain droppings of D.H. Rumsfeld and expand the anthology!

The Situation
Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.
-Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

Donald Rumsfeld. Officially, he is the United States Secretary of Defense. Unofficially, some see him as the man who saved us from the next Hitler. And some see him as the man who started World War III.

But how many of us see Donald Rumsfeld, the Poet?

Here he speaks of us, the Kuro5hin "trained apes":

The Digital Revolution
Oh my goodness gracious,
What you can buy off the Internet
In terms of overhead photography!

A trained ape can know an awful lot
Of what is going on in this world,
Just by punching on his mouse
For a relatively modest cost!
-June 9, 2001, following European trip

If you listen to the talking head feeds on the major news outlets, you notice something sometimes, it really strikes you. That is, interspersed between the teleprompter droids droning on and on like heavy late summer flies and the military types who speak like staccato gunfire, like mathematical equations, you notice someone different.

Very different. He pauses. He grimaces and exhales, reaching deeply for inspiration. And then, he delivers unto us, from the soul... poetry:

Clarity
I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.

And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.
-Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense news briefing

The question is simple: does he know it? Is he in touch with his poetic soul? Or is it merely a subconscious display?

Has he missed his calling? Or has fate merely brought us a poet in disguise?

A Confession
Once in a while,
I'm standing here, doing something.
And I think,
"What in the world am I doing here?"
It's a big surprise.
-May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times

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Poll
Is Donald Rumsfeld a Poet?
o Yes, he deserves a Nobel Prize. Peace AND Literature. 12%
o Yes, he is Satan's gifted mouthpiece, a deceiver. 14%
o No, he is on LSD/ Psilocybin/ Salvia Divinorum. 8%
o No, he had a stroke in Broca's Area (speech area of the Brain). 4%
o What do you expect from Locutus of Borg? 12%
o This is an unknown unknown. We don't know, we don't know. 29%
o Show me a Haiku and I'll say Yes. 4%
o Babylon. Iraq. Speaking in Tongues. Biblical Conspiracy! 13%

Votes: 167
Results | Other Polls

Related Links
o Kuro5hin
o Hart Seely
o Slate
o See Slate for more poems.
o pb
o A Perl Module for Haiku generation.
o Rumsfeld quotes aplenty.
o Department of Defense
o classic soundbites from the BBC
o brainyquot e.com
o Lots of good working material.
o Also by circletimessquare

Display: Sort:
Donald Rumsfeld... the Poet? | 145 comments (98 topical, 47 editorial, 0 hidden)
Also, (none / 0) (#4)
by pb on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 02:46:38 AM EST

If you want more of these, all you really need is a ready source of quotes, and optionally some way to format them properly into poetry.
---
"See what the drooling, ravening, flesh-eating hordes^W^W^W^WKuro5hin.org readers have to say."
-- pwhysall
morbid (4.33 / 6) (#17)
by the77x42 on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 03:25:45 AM EST

http://dod.gov/news/Apr2003/t04072003_t0407sd.html

Good afternoon
Coalition forces are operating
In and around
Baghdad on the ground
In the air
The regime's leaders are increasingly isolated
The circle is closing
And their options
Are
Running
Out


"We're not here to educate. We're here to point and laugh." - creature
"You have some pretty stupid ideas." - indubitable ‮

Reporting (4.20 / 5) (#22)
by the77x42 on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 03:30:44 AM EST

http://dod.gov/news/Apr2003/t04072003_t0407sd.html

Once we decided to put reporters in with units that were out
It was obvious that they would be there when things were discovered
And that they would report on them
Which is fine.
And they've reported what sounded
-- I haven't seen the report
But it sounded --
You used the word "apparently"
And you used the word "preliminary,"
So it sounds like a very responsible report.

We don't do that.
We have to recognize that almost all first reports that we get turn out to be wrong.
There tend to be changes in them.
And as a result
We have to take our time and look at it.
I don't know, Dick,
How many of these things we've seen
In the last couple of years,
But literally dozens
And dozens
And dozens
Of instances where the first report comes in
-- and perfectly good reporting --
But it's wrong.
And therefore, we don't do that.
We don't do first reports and we don't speculate.



"We're not here to educate. We're here to point and laugh." - creature
"You have some pretty stupid ideas." - indubitable ‮

On knowledge (5.00 / 2) (#26)
by the77x42 on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 03:36:11 AM EST

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/q135897.html


Learn to say "I don't know."
If used when appropriate,
it will be often.


"We're not here to educate. We're here to point and laugh." - creature
"You have some pretty stupid ideas." - indubitable ‮

On his job (4.66 / 3) (#29)
by the77x42 on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 03:40:27 AM EST

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/q135961.html
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/q135936.html

In politics, every day is filled with numerous opportunities for serious error.
Enjoy it.

Don't be a bottleneck.
If a matter is not a decision for the President or you
Delegate it.
Force responsibility down and out.
Find problem areas
Add structure
And delegate
The pressure is to do the reverse.
Resist it.


"We're not here to educate. We're here to point and laugh." - creature
"You have some pretty stupid ideas." - indubitable ‮

A related link: (4.42 / 7) (#32)
by mcc on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 03:45:34 AM EST

Some of you may also be interested to know of John Ashcroft's work as a singer/songwriter.

Here is a link to John Ashcroft performing "Let the Eagles Soar", a song he wrote and then proceeded to interject at the end of a speech he gave at a seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. I believe this video speaks for itself.

Here also, incidentally, is a Guardian link which implies Ashcroft may have tried to coerce his staff into group singalongs at about the same time.

---
Aside from that, the absurd meta-wankery of k5er-quoting sigs probably takes the cake. Especially when the quote itself is about k5. -- tsubame

The...funniest...thing...evAr (5.00 / 5) (#33)
by the77x42 on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 03:47:19 AM EST

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/bh/rams/bh_rumsfeld3.ram


"We're not here to educate. We're here to point and laugh." - creature
"You have some pretty stupid ideas." - indubitable ‮

Rumsfeld quote audio? (5.00 / 1) (#35)
by omegadan on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 05:07:54 AM EST

Can anyone get me or suggest a source for the audio clip of "The Unkown" ? I'd *love* to use it on my album, as it is titled "The Fastlife", and this seems on-topic.

Religion is a gateway psychosis. - Dave Foley

Rumsfeld's warning (4.50 / 6) (#37)
by salsaman on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 05:17:14 AM EST

There's a lot more fighting
that's going to be done
There are --
more people are going to be killed.

Let there be no doubt.
This is not over,
despite all the celebrations
on the street.

Only in America (3.20 / 5) (#41)
by Blarney on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 06:28:06 AM EST

I like the soundbites. They rock.

At the risk of repeating myself and annoying people, I really enjoyed the drunken George Bush clip giving his accidentally artistic wedding roast, so much that (as I've previously announced in Diaries) I cut it up and made a humorous song out of it. It's kind of a poem too, at least it's blank verse without meter or rhyme, and is delivered in a repetitive, rhythmic monotone. Here are the original words for those who might suspect me of distorting their meaning by editing:

Only in America would a couple like that be allowed to unite.
Beautiful people, yes, beautiful people.
God bless America, yes, this being an election year they're wonderful people.
Fine taxpayers.
Very mundane people, very boring very boring person.
Very boring person, hates to drink, doesn't like to smoke.
Very athletic, loves to run, fine golfer.
Very skinny fella, marathon runner, hates to drink.
Only in America could a guy like that even find work.
Very slim person, likes to run marathons,
Only in America would anybody ever call her Mom.

The first known I know (3.69 / 13) (#44)
by mami on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 07:59:14 AM EST

is that Sec. Rumsfeld needs to be fired, because he is not capable to perform Press Conferences that meet the ethical standards of press conferences.

The second known I know is, that his boss doesn't want to fire him, because his boss is not capable to understand the ethical standards  of a Press conference and why those standards need to followed.  

The third known I know is, that the Vize President is happy with his President, because he knows that Press Conferences, that meet those ethical standards, would be unhealthy to his career.

The fourth known I know is, that all of this is a publicly known known that nobody wants to know.

Damnit I wished I would have never known the word "know".

The only unknown known is that it would be better to not know all the knowns to keep the known knowns from giving you headaches.

Churchill (5.00 / 3) (#60)
by Scrymarch on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 02:51:56 PM EST

Churchill wrote out his speeches in blank verse format before giving them, so he'd get the stresses right.  All good orators have a poetic awareness - Rumsfeld's is obviously tuned to the improvised constraints of a televised press conference.

Better watch out (4.50 / 2) (#61)
by medham on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 03:12:49 PM EST

He's a war-machine.

The real 'medham' has userid 6831.

Rumsfeld reminds me of The Rock! (4.66 / 3) (#62)
by NaCh0 on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 03:32:22 PM EST

Watch a WWF (WWE for you wildlife jabronis) pre-match interview with The Rock. Then watch Rumsfeld answer questions at a news briefing. He's laying the smacketh down on all those candyass reporters!!

--
K5: Your daily dose of socialism.
Poetry and Response (4.00 / 5) (#85)
by Kwil on Sat Apr 12, 2003 at 01:11:23 PM EST

Absent a dictator,
absent the Saddam Hussein
regime, our goal
would be first
to have a single country,
not have a country
broken up into pieces,
it would be
to see
that it would be a country
without weapons
of mass destruction,
a country
that did not try
to impose
its will
upon its neighbors
and it was
a country
that was respectful
of the rights
of minorities
and the ethnic groups
that exist
in the country.

Donald Rumsfeld

I would reply to him with this one:

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

Mohandas Gandhi

That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Heh (1.00 / 2) (#86)
by A Proud American on Sat Apr 12, 2003 at 01:14:38 PM EST

Slate really is going down the tubes, I see.

They've apparently realized they can't write and have resorted to lame poetry of what others have said.

____________________________
The weak are killed and eaten...

The man with real star quality is.... (5.00 / 2) (#90)
by mickwd on Sat Apr 12, 2003 at 03:57:08 PM EST

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi information minister.

Or "Comical Ali" as he is now known.

Man, that's so hysterical. (4.00 / 5) (#91)
by kitten on Sat Apr 12, 2003 at 04:01:15 PM EST

Wait, I bet we can take just about any block of text and break it up so it magically becomes poetry! Here's Inoshiro's Nobel-prize winning adaptation of "Kuro5hin FAQ No. 2":

If you say, "so what?". Consider:
The real advantage of this
To watch stories and
To easily keep track of any new comments
On an article.
In the hotlist listing
(on the right side)
It also shows
How many comments have been posted
to a article.
So once you have read
the comments on an article, and
you know there are X comments,
If someone else posts
a new comment, you
will be able to see that on your menu bar
without having to actually go
check the articles you are interested in
all the time.

Brilliant!
mirrorshades radio - darkwave, synthpop, industrial, futurepop.
Stuff Happens + See Tommy Run. Run Tommy, Run. (3.00 / 4) (#92)
by kpaul on Sat Apr 12, 2003 at 04:49:08 PM EST

Stuff happens

It's untidy.
And freedom's
untidy.

And free
people
are free
to make mistakes
and commit crimes
and do bad things...

Television is
merely running
the same footage
of the same man
stealing a vase
over and over...


-Pentagon Briefing 2k3 - source: Al-Jazeera.net

Bonus Bush Poem:

I reminded them that
war
in Iraq
is really about
peace.

This victory in Iraq,
when it happens,
will make the world
more
peaceful.

Tommy tells us
what is necessary
to achieve the objective.

We gave Tommy the tools
necessary to win

And when Tommy says
we've achieved our objectives,
that's when
we've achieved our objectives.

The war will end when Tommy
Franks says
we've achieved our objectives.


-Bush at a hospital visiting the wounded


2014 Halloween Costumes
A little poem I wrote (2.66 / 3) (#94)
by MichaelCrawford on Sat Apr 12, 2003 at 08:31:53 PM EST

I did quite poorly when studying poetry in school, and ordinarily I cannot compose verse to save my life, but sometimes, when I am in a certain state of mind, I can recite verse with perfect rhyme and meter for hours on end. It's a helpful clue for me.

Here's a little poem I found written in one of my notebooks after one of those times:

Pitter patter
Flitter flatter
Wop de who de who
I am magic
Life is tragic
Who the Hell are you?

Thank you for your attention.


--

Live your fucking life. Sue someone on the Internet. Write a fucking music player. Like the great man Michael David Crawford has shown us all: Hard work, a strong will to stalk, and a few fries short of a happy meal goes a long way. -- bride of spidy

Donald Rumsfeld isn't the first poet in the post. (5.00 / 2) (#95)
by Netsnipe on Sat Apr 12, 2003 at 11:15:15 PM EST

In one episode of the Awful Truth, Michael Moore discovers that then Secretary under Clinton, William Cohen, had published two volumes of poetry (A Baker's Nickel and Of Sons and Seasons). Fearing for America's ability to intimidate her enemies, Moore sets off to challenge him to an arm wrestling match...

Makes you wonder whether Rumsfeld would have accepted the challenge.

--
Andrew 'Netsnipe' Lau
Debian GNU/Linux Maintainer & Computer Science, UNSW

Thats some of the... (none / 0) (#96)
by ThreadSafe on Sat Apr 12, 2003 at 11:21:08 PM EST

fucking funniest shit I ever seen.

Make a clone of me. And fucking listen to it! - Faik

lameness (4.42 / 7) (#107)
by Estanislao Martínez on Sun Apr 13, 2003 at 01:42:26 PM EST

I should have known before voting that this would inspire kurobots to lame imitations (there's a handful of those below; only one is any good). People, despite the point that kitten is a bloody fool, he has a point: taking text and cutting it up into lines does not poetry make.

Notice how the Slate author carefully chooses quotes that isolated from their original context take on a certain "universal" quality ("things will not necessarily be continous", where absent the antecedent for "things", takes on a sort of universal reading; "The Confession", where "here" is also removed from context and takes on a meaning like "in the world", or "in whichever spot I happen to be at the moment"); not the latest details about the news about Iraq, which everybody will forget three months from now. Note how he also chooses quotes for reasons of good poetic form, like repetition ("And it will be known..."). He also exploits Rumsfeld's disfluencies in the poem "Glass Box".

In other words: kurobots, you have once more given proof that you suck. And even worse, that you'll congratulate each other over your mediocrity and devolve into a blatant no-talent circle jerk.

--em

I'm sorry, but... (2.00 / 1) (#108)
by mikelist on Sun Apr 13, 2003 at 01:57:16 PM EST

I'm with the guy that explained the difference between poetry and prose, "If it doesn't rhyme, it's prose.".

Jessie Rumsfeld (none / 0) (#109)
by mcgrew on Sun Apr 13, 2003 at 04:57:22 PM EST

Could Donald be Jessie Jackson's illigitimate brother?

Does Jesse know HE makes (bad) rhymes? And did anybody see Jackson on SNL the night after Dr. Suess died, reading "Green Eggs and Ham"?

Is Jesse Jackson Dr. Suess' illigitimate son?

And how the hell do yuou spell "illigitimate"? I'm becoming retarded in my old age. I used to be able to spell shit like "antididestablismentarianism" and "deoxyriboneucleic acid", now after using computers for 20 years I can't spell "sh8t!"

"The entire neocon movement is dedicated to revoking mcgrew's posting priviliges. This is why we went to war with Iraq." -LilDebbie

what makes it funny (5.00 / 1) (#116)
by peckerhead on Sun Apr 13, 2003 at 11:21:12 PM EST

even though he makes these retarded comments he still manages to display a patronizingly superior attitude in everything he says

Two weeks late (none / 0) (#118)
by goodwine on Mon Apr 14, 2003 at 12:04:39 AM EST

fark posted this on 2 April, 2003. Perhaps I should quit checking k5 for the "latest news and commentary.

A poem (ahem) (1.33 / 3) (#120)
by drivers on Mon Apr 14, 2003 at 01:49:46 AM EST

He's a poet And he doesn't know-it.

It's a Feynman ripoff (none / 0) (#122)
by Will Sargent on Mon Apr 14, 2003 at 02:48:11 AM EST

The original and still the greatest.

It has not yet
become obvious to me
that there's
no real problem.

I cannot define
the real problem,
therefore I suspect there's
no real problem,
but I'm not sure there's
no
real
problem.
----
I'm pickle. I'm stealing your pregnant.

About the unknown (none / 0) (#124)
by Niha on Mon Apr 14, 2003 at 06:34:25 AM EST

  He has a sense of rythm in fact....We´ll have to keep an eye on his work

any true haiku yet? (none / 0) (#126)
by circletimessquare on Mon Apr 14, 2003 at 09:31:24 AM EST

has anyone found a real 575 haiku in the brain droppings yet? lol ;-P

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
What do politicians and poets have in common? (5.00 / 1) (#128)
by jolly st nick on Mon Apr 14, 2003 at 11:45:40 AM EST

They twist language to their own purpose.

However, that is not what I think we have here, because Rumseld is a transparently clumsy politician.

Instead, I detect perhaps a certain mode of reasoning characteristic of particular kind of education, one that emphasizes classics and syllogistic reasonsing. Either he was directly trained to argue this way directly, or was strongly influenced by somebody who was so trained. I would not be surprised if he went to a prep school or attended an elite Roman Catholic school at some formative stage of his life.

There is a form of inference that goes this way: (A | B) & -A --> B.

You can use dichotomies as a powerful knife to slice the universe of possibilities into to alternatives, one of which can be rejected. People trained, or at least disposed, to reason this way like separate issues into parallel cases. If they write and talk in this fashion, their statements would display a pattern of formal parallelism, which sounds stilted and somewhat repetitious.



LOL Good stuff (none / 0) (#136)
by mguercio on Mon Apr 14, 2003 at 06:08:12 PM EST

The thing is, we hate to admit the truth.
The definition of "high achievment" is not the wisdom that you have attained yourself, but the wisdom you can share with others.
Poetry from Canada (none / 0) (#140)
by lexical gap on Mon Apr 14, 2003 at 11:59:22 PM EST

Obviously Donald Rumsfeld is a poetic genius. Prior to this post, I thought that was held solely by Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chretien when explaining what kind of proof he needed to back an attack on Iraq:

A proof is a proof.
What kind of a proof?
It's a proof.
A proof is a proof.
And when you have a good proof,
it's because it's proven.

Here's how it's done, kiddies. (5.00 / 1) (#145)
by eSolutions on Thu Apr 17, 2003 at 11:12:31 PM EST

Watch and learn.

----
The Wedding Night
Relatively calm
Not permissive
Yet.

But no organized resistance, and
Services
Are in the process of being
Restored.

There is not any organized fight taking place.
-Sunday, April 13, 2003, Media Stakeout following NBC Meet the Press
----

----
Making periods more convenient -- one box at a time.
--Tampax Commercial

unknown knowns? (none / 0) (#147)
by Jim Madison on Sat Apr 19, 2003 at 01:16:43 AM EST

It's seems that he missed a logical possibility in his poem. Oversight or hidden meaning? - Mike

Got democracy? Try e-thePeople.org.
Iraq has a poet too (none / 0) (#148)
by wji on Sun Apr 20, 2003 at 10:15:47 AM EST

Well, had. I speak of course of Saeed al-Shahaf, that ever-witty and well-informed media face of the ancien regime. Some choice works:

It Has Been Rumoured
It has been rumored
that we have fired scud missiles
into Kuwait.

I am here now to tell you,
we do not have any scud missiles
and I don't know why they were fired into Kuwait.

The Airport
NO!
We have retaken the airport.
There are NO Americans there.
I will take you there and show you.

In one hour!

Fish in a River
Listen,
this explosion does not frighten us any langer.
The cruise missiles
do not frighten anyone.

We are catching them
like fish in a river.

Control Yourself
Who are in control?
They are not in control of anything.
They don't even control themselves!


In conclusion, the Powerpuff Girls are a reactionary, pseudo-feminist enterprise.

Working w/words (none / 0) (#149)
by knott art on Sun Apr 20, 2003 at 11:27:47 AM EST

"Things are more like they are now than they've ever been before." Richard M. Nixon
Knott Art
Donald Rumsfeld... the Poet? | 145 comments (98 topical, 47 editorial, 0 hidden)
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