Photo Illustration (Images courtesy US Army and Vespa USA.)
Donald Rumsfeld buys a scooter
By Eoin O'Carroll | 06.13.08
Regular readers of this blog – and I assure you that they number in the millions – are well aware that I am an avid scooterist. So you can imagine how my interest was piqued when I learned that the latest celebrity purchaser of the increasingly hip form of two-wheeled conveyance is none other than former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The Examiner’s Yeas & Nays column reports:
Yeas & Nays has learned that Mr. Macho recently stopped by the Vespa dealership in Glover Park [in Washington, DC] and took home a LXV 150 scooter, which can reach speeds of up to 60 miles per hour (and get 60 miles per gallon to boot). It’s hardly a Hummer, but with $4/gallon gas, sacrifices have to be made.
When Yeas & Nays asked him about his purchase last week at the Bradley Prizes ceremony at the Kennedy Center, a cane-wielding Rumsfeld declined to comment, chalking his grumpiness up to the fact that he “just got surgery on my hip.” (Rummy’s hip surgery, of course, makes it all the more curious why he’s opted for a vehicle that offers hardly any protection in the case of an accident.)
Now I have to admit that Mr. Rumsfeld is just about the last person I would expect to see tooling around on a Vespa. But I guess that will teach me not to stereotype people.
Rummy, if you’re reading this, I’d like to challenge you to a friendly scooter race (once your hip is feeling better, of course). You pick the time and place. I realize that your 150cc Vespa has a lot more power than my 50cc Honda, but I’m willing to take you on regardless. After all, you go into a race with the scooter you have, not the scooter you want.
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2. Eoin | 06.23.08
You know, that’s what I thought at first, too. But that person would have had to accompany him into the scooter shop to produce a driver’s license, and the story makes no mention of that.
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1. Fred | 06.23.08
The most likely explanation, to me, is that he bought it as a gift for someone else.