Saturday, June 7, 2014

Rum and Rummy

I got a band of snarky Canadians to watch the Errol Morris documentary about Donald Rumsfeld while we tried out rum-based drinks: Rum and Rummy!  The rum drinks were far better than the doc, if I do say myself as the bartender.  Oy, Rumsfeld is unreflective, completely lacking in sympathy, largely devoid of insight. 

Here is my storify of the occasion.

Check it out... or not.  We had fun, but that was mostly due to the company, the rum and the rum cake (yes, I baked before being baked). 

One might find this doc to be particularly vulnerable to confirmation bias--that fans of Rummy would find his pedantic take on everything to be perfectly useful and insightful.  His non-fans (a club in which I have long been a member) would see mostly justification for their previous beliefs.  But we did have some folks in the room that were on the fence before watching and found themselves pushed over to the non-fan side as a result of the documentary.

Should I have expected any reflection from Rumsfeld?  Perhaps not.  But maybe, just maybe he could have acknowledged the many contradictions he fudged along the way.  Nope.  I still think he is the worst SecDef in history.  Perhaps that jaded my views, but it is a good thing we did not set this up as a drinking game.  Otherwise, unknown unknowns and other efforts to elide and deny would have gotten all of seriously hammered.

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