Thursday, November 16, 2006

As We Know... (Well-Crafted Political Satire)


Through music, video, and considerable attention to detail, artists have created some brilliant satirical pieces about Donald Rumsfeld, our accidental poet laureate and former Secretary of Defense. Today let us appreciate some of their well-crafted political satire. (I will stop with the diversions and get back to craft writing soon...)

Happy laughing, gentle readers! (And happy trails, Rummy!)


:: The brilliant, hilarious video Rumsfeld Gets Cute at the Podium, from the Craig Ferguson show.

:: Musician Phil Kline put some of Rumsfeld's obtuse statements to modern, atonal music. The results are addictive. (Click on "Three Rumsfeld Songs" in the playlist at the left to hear generous clips. My favorite is #2.)

:: Poet Hart Seely also arranged some of Rumsfeld's actual quotes into poems, and then musician Bryant Kong put the poems to music, this time sung as arias by a soprano. The "poems" (which are all real quotes from Rumsfeld) are given here, too.

:: Don't believe those songs are the real quotes? BBC Radio 4 offers a whole bunch of links to actual Rumsfeld soundbites. They are simply astonishing.


Do you know of any other Rumsfeld satire? Let me know! I'm collecting...
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Photo sourced here

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, since you're collecting... ;)

I'm the co-creator of The Rumsfeld Diaries Political Action Pak, the goal of which was to move public opinion that last little bit necessary to get Rumsfeld booted from office. (And it happened exactly 100 days after our launch - go figure!)

The "Diaries" themselves assumed a satirical motive behind US forays into Iraq - that Rumsfeld, former hearthrob that he was, had in fact been carrying on a forbidden on-again/off-again love affair with Saddam Hussein.

More info on it here: www.RumsfeldDiaries.com

Hope you like what you read there! And thanks for collecting the other Rummy goodies always glad to find someone else laughing in the face of Rumsfeld!

Cheers,
Allen Voivod