There was a man whose name was Dick;
Don’t ever be like him.
His tone was rude; his tongue was quick;
You’d never call him prim;
He always called a spade a spade—
Unvarnished was his truth—
To argue, he was unafraid,
And had been since his youth.
Opponents claimed that Dick was mean
(Of course, he did not care;
Just one more chance to vent his spleen,
To argue, and to swear)
They came up with a special plan
As smooth as it was slick
They started to dismiss the man
And blamed it all on Dick.
There also was another guy
I think his name was Stan
Who had it in his mind to try
And be a nicer man;
He argued smartly; argued well,
So cogently and brightly
And always (so the stories tell)
He argued so politely!
But those with whom he argued saw
In Stan, a different sort;
A Stan they’d mostly made of straw
To pick apart, for sport
They knew that Stanley disagreed—
Politeness didn’t stick—
The disagreement’s all they need
To label him a Dick.
5 comments
Skip to comment form ↓
Alan Cooper
August 29, 2010 at 6:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ok, I’ll bite.This is my first time on this site,And I may not be too clever.So at risk of seeming uninformed,Illiterate or whatever.I have to ask who is this man?Who the hell is Stan?
Cuttlefish
August 29, 2010 at 8:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Alan–In the great tradition of asking one's muse for a name which fits one's rhyme and meter (and receiving that name–thanks, muse!), Stan is simply Not Dick.
John S. Wilkins
August 29, 2010 at 9:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Stan is Somebody That Acts Nicely.
Cuttlefish
August 29, 2010 at 10:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Perfect, JSW!
Ophelia
September 10, 2010 at 8:37 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Funny poem! You may not agree, but I think that many reasonable and intelligent people may be dismissing Dick, whereas a smaller number of close minded and stupid people will be thinking that Stan is really a dick.