Say, is that young Don Rumsfeld playing a flirty game with a geisha girl on a package of spicy nuts? Why yes, yes it is.

http://motherjones.tumblr.com/post/1393657...

The story is rich with known unknowns too. For example, we know that the former White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense did not know that his more than slightly eccentric portrait was being used this way until TIME informed his people.

.......................................

And here’s another Rumsfeldian known unknown: few Britons ripping open a packet of the wasabi-flavored treats would recognize the anonymous man unwittingly pressed into service to promote the product. There’s no caption to the photograph on the packaging. “We chose it because we loved the picture,” confirms Rudgard. “The fact that Donald Rumsfeld was featured was merely coincidental.” Indeed, the packaging was an unknown unknown. British consumers didn’t know they didn’t know the story behind it.



Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/12/0...


Photographer, Kennerly e-mails:
it is my pic, taken at a state dinner featuring Geisha, in Kyoto, November 21, 1974 … Rumsfeld, then the White House Chief of Staff, participated in this Japanese parlor game that involved passing a piece of straw held between the upper lip and nose to the person next to him (a Geisha dressed in colorful attire, in this case). Rumsfeld, defying tradition as is his way, used a chopstick instead of the obligatory straw. The nose-down winner, however, was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who invoked the ‘closer-to-the-upper-lip-with-his-schnoz’ rule, thereby defeating Rumsfeld and President Ford, who was also in the competition.

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/12/0...