Right, that would make sense, ...

Right, but aren't they typically followed by the appreciation of the insight rather than derision of whoever points it out?

I imagine the people who used the quote to mock Rumsfeld were already inclined to treat the quote uncharitably, and used its funniness/odd-soundingness as a pretext to mock him.

Wow, you have got to see Under Siege 2. It has this exchange (from memory):

Yeah, that got a giggle from me. Makes me wonder why some kinds of repetition are funny and some aren't!

Yes, "damned if you do, damned if you don't" is fun, but ultimately to be avoided by respectable people.

Agreed - I didn't mean to condone simultaneously mocking Rumsfeld's quote while acknowledging its saneness, just to explain why one might find it funny.

True, but it's not really Rumsfeld's job to improve reporters' questions. I mean, he might be a Bayesian master if he did, but it's not really to be expected.

It is (well, was) his job to make a good faith effort to try and answer their questions. (At least on paper, anyway. If we're being cynical, we might argue that his actual job was to avoid tough questions.) If I justified evading otherwise good questions in a Q&A because of minor lexical flubs, that would make the Q&A something of a charade.