Don't Be Dick. Or Stan.

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.