Talk:Carl D. Perkins

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Azlizc. Peer reviewers: Scotti mills.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 16:48, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 10:54, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

--Azlizc (talk) 17:11, 3 March 2017 (UTC) I will be working on this article for a class and wanted to put my bibliography for information that I got about Carl D. Perkins here so that anyone who wants to check sources would be able to.

Requested move 18 April 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page as proposed at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 04:48, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Carl D. Perkins → Carl Perkins (politician) – The politician was more commonly known without his middle initial, even though his political career in the US Congress (1949 to 1984) coincided with the heyday of the more famous musician behind "Blue Suede Shoes." Arbor to SJ (talk) 05:56, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

His most prominent bill in Congress, the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, is commonly known as the "Carl Perkins Act" for short. This 1989 paper in the journal Economics of Education Review uses that short name in the abstract, as does this 2004 summary of a Congressional hearing about the Act and this 2006 article in Time magazine.

An example of a scholarly work omitting the middle initial: The 1993 book Congressional Committee Chairmen: Three Who Made an Evolution has a chapter titled "The Chairmanship of Carl Perkins."

TV newscasts used "Carl Perkins"

My search of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive for "Carl D. Perkins" returns a single 1971 broadcast of the CBS Evening News in which anchor Roger Mudd apparently used "Carl D. Perkins" in his report, because the abstract uses that name. However, "Carl Perkins" (in items before August 10, 1984 shortly after his passing, and dating back to the archive's earliest date on August 5, 1968) returns 24 items (mostly about the politician not musician). For instance, this summary of a November 26, 1968 report begins: "Carl Perkins, of House Education and Labor Committee, announces investigations of poverty programs in dozen cities."

Newspapers omitted the middle initial too

The Washington Post headline upon his passing: "Rep. Carl Perkins of Education Panel Dies."

The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky historically omitted the middle initial more often, most prominently in its obituary headline: "Heart attack claims life of U.S. Rep. Carl Perkins." It also reflects in google searches in the Newspapers.com site: "Rep. carl perkins" "Courier journal" site:newspapers.com returns 1000+ results to the nearly 700 for "Rep. carl d perkins" "Courier journal" site:newspapers.com.

Other examples:


 * Excerpt from a 1977 front page story: "Democrats Romano Mazzoli, William Natcher and Carl Perkins voted against the B-1 bomber." On that same front page, there was a teaser for a Sunday magazine story headlined "Whatever Happened to Carl Perkins?" - but about the musician Perkins. The juxtaposition of both uses of "Carl Perkins" indicates that the C-J deemed it appropriate to use "Carl Perkins" to refer to both the member of Congress and "Blue Suede Shoes" singer.


 * A 1983 story begins: "Kentucky's two most senior congressmen Carl Perkins and William Natcher came off the House floor last Thursday proclaiming their fast friendship."


 * And in 1969: "Rep. Carl Perkins has launched another missile in his five-month battle with Gov. Louie B. Nunn over the way Kentucky poverty programs are run." So look at this: Editors used the middle initial for Governor Nunn but skipped it for Congressman Perkins.

Similarly, the article about another US politician who shares a name with a far more famous musician, US Senator Paul Simon, is titled Paul Simon (politician) instead of "Paul M. Simon". Arbor to SJ (talk) 05:56, 18 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose per WP:NATURAL and WP:NCPDAB. All of the sources in the article use Carl D. Perkins or Carl Dewey Perkins. Even if it weren't the most common name, it's very definitely a common name that should be used for an otherwise ambiguous title. In any case, Carl Perkins (politician) could also refer to his son, Carl C. Perkins. - Station1 (talk) 19:37, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
 * However, one source cited does use "Carl Perkins": the very first one that is a scan of the August 4, 1984 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette using "Rep. Carl Perkins dies" as a headline to a reprinted Associated Press wire story. You would think that news editors in the '80s would have been extra mindful about readers thinking the "Blue Suede Shoes" singer served in Congress. Also, other sources not yet cited here (but should be) use "Carl Perkins".


 * Additionally, Carl C. Perkins has been moved to Chris Perkins (politician) per a recent move discussion. Arbor to SJ (talk) 03:28, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
 * We never go by headlines, which are space sensitive and often informal, we go by first mention in running text, which says "Rep. Carl D. Perkins, who spent 36 years..." Anyway, there's no question he's sometimes called Carl Perkins, but we can't use that because of the singer, so Carl D. Perkins is far better than an ambiguous artifical qualifier. Station1 (talk) 14:23, 20 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.