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The Week In News, In Verse

Some of the faces of this never-ending cycle of BREAKING NEWS: (top row, from left) Rod Rosenstein, Stormy Daniels and Scott Pruitt, and (bottom row, from left) John Bolton, Mark Zuckerberg and President Trump.
Reuters
Some of the faces of this never-ending cycle of BREAKING NEWS: (top row, from left) Rod Rosenstein, Stormy Daniels and Scott Pruitt, and (bottom row, from left) John Bolton, Mark Zuckerberg and President Trump.

How do you keep up on all the news?

I think many Americans ask that of one another these days. There's BREAKING NEWS every few minutes that seems to leave all previous BREAKING NEWS stories behind.

News of a horrifying chemical attack in Syria is soon superseded by news of a raid on the offices of a longtime Trump attorney who may have figured into other stories that have been BREAKING NEWS.

News of the founder of Facebook being grilled by members of Congress about foreign entities helping themselves to the personal information of millions of Americans is soon superseded by news that a New York doorman was paid to keep quiet about an alleged story about Donald Trump and a housekeeper.

Maybe we could all use a mnemonic device to keep all the names and details in the news in our minds — like a poem:

Stormy Daniels set off a storm
When she said Trump didn't sign
their nondisclosure form.
Michael Avenatti is her savvy counselor
always on-set with Anderson Cooper
While Michael Cohen is Trump's advocate
Who says hocking your house to help a client
Isn't extravagant.

There are charges about Scott Pruitt at the EPA
In each news cycle every day.
He only flies in first-class seats
And sleeps in fresh-pressed sheets
In a condo owned by lobbyists
Who said they had to nag him to pay the rent.

Tillerson and Shulkin: given the boot,
But the attorney general is left to droop.
Jeff Sessions said he'd recuse himself.
The president would just like to lose him.

Rod Rosenstein might now have an ulcer
From hiring, or not firing, Bob Mueller.
Will he stay — or will he be let go? — is the question
to give him indigestion.

John Bolton renounced and bounced all
his staff at the National Security Council.
While senators asked Mike Pompeo if he was strong
enough to tell the president if he was wrong
about Russia, North Korea or Bob Mueller.

Other names fly by, each hour, in the news:
Karen McDougal and Summer ZervosComey, Zuckerberg, and Kim Jong Un,
Scooter Libby and Dino Sajudin —
the Trump Tower doorman whose name
is simply too musical not to be usin'.

And then the president tweets, "slime ball."

Attention is intense
for several minutes
then we go on to other business
When despots use chemical weapons,
our impressions
last just until the next BREAKING NEWS
lights a fuse.
We may be overstuffed with stressful news —
and underinformed.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Corrected: April 14, 2018 at 12:00 AM EDT
A caption in a previous version of this story incorrectly gave Rod Rosenstein's first name as Rob.
US
Scott Simon is one of America's most admired writers and broadcasters. He is the host of Weekend Edition Saturday and is one of the hosts of NPR's morning news podcast Up First. He has reported from all fifty states, five continents, and ten wars, from El Salvador to Sarajevo to Afghanistan and Iraq. His books have chronicled character and characters, in war and peace, sports and art, tragedy and comedy.