Talk:Damaging quotation

(a lot of talk moved here from talk:Bushisms -- refactoring underway)

Silk purses
,, , , ...
 * Bushisms sites: ,


 * soulpatch writes "The White House often rewrites official transcripts to clean up Bush's mangling of the language. The press often does this as well".

We foreigners like our handy "Cut out and keep guide to the presidents..."
 * Kennedy (Dead)
 * Johnson (Who?)
 * Nixon (Corrupt)
 * Ford (Stupid)
 * Carter (Incompetent)
 * Reagan (Asleep)
 * Bush the Elected (Incompetent)
 * Clinton (Fornicating)
 * Bush the Appointed (Stupid)

"A Bushism is a public verbal gaffe by United States President George W. Bush." -- Misleading; the term was first used in reference to his father George Herbert Walker Bush. The earliest Google hit I find is from 5 Aug 1992. 

The term was used as the title of a 1992 book by the editors of New Republic magazine. 

Amazon.com books on Bushisms by *both* Bushes

Should Wikipedia contain a list of Bushisms?
All quotations here are misquotations, since that seemed appropriate, given the topic... :-)


 * In favour of inclusion:
 * soulpatch -- "Bush's gaffes are a matter of political discourse. Suppresing them would be whitewashing".


 * Against inclusion:
 * User:GWO -- "its too dictionary"... "too many examples"...
 * FvdP -- "I would not feel bad if these articles were to disappear from mainstream Wikipedia".
 * "TMC" -- "Having a list of 'Bushisms' is like having a list of 'Subhuman Races'."
 * Larry Sanger -- lose the list of actual Bushisms and Goreisms"


 * Other:
 * Ed Poor -- "I love the article", but "I'd like to rewrite it not as a list, but as an explanation of why people like to compile such lists"

There was a brief digression on whether Sanger had insulted soulpatch, or made an ad hominem attack on him (and others), and whether Sanger should continue to "chastize people for their lapses into idiocy" (his words), practice "shame culture" (his words), "resort to personal insults" (soulpatch's words), and be a "butthead" (Stormwriter's words). Sanger decided that he should, because other people "have no excuse", and anyway "it takes way too much effort to restrain myself".


 * (personal comment) Score one for WikiLove then. Martin 01:15 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * As one who's been adding Dubya quotes, but trying to pick those with some significance deeper than simple illinguacy (?), I fear that a "standing order" to exclude so-called "Bushisms" will be expanded into an excuse by Bushheads to delete everything they don't like. Kwantus 22:49, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC) ("If you can bear to hear the truth [sic] you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools...")

Sow's ears
Why has this page and Gore-ism been protected? Maybe Larry is right in his assertion that there can never be a worthwhile page here, but a lot of people don't think he is, and in protecting the page you're depriving them of the ability to prove him wrong. If I'd been an admin for more than three days I would unprotect them myself, but as it is I'm very wary of using my powers. --Camembert

Yes, I'm not sure I'd want to protect them myself, if I had the power. --Larry Sanger

I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, I agree that the topic heading, regardless of content, is not NPOV. On the other hand, wikipedia is already full of non-NPOV headings, so why should this one be any different?

Which others? Let's go to work. --Larry Sanger


 * That isn't going to happen. Bias is inherent in the categorization of every controversial issue.


 * That doesn't make any sense to me. What does it mean to say "Bias is inherent in the categorization of every controversial issue" in the context of Wikipedia?


 * Look at Holocaust denial, as an example. Why does this view of the holocaust get shunted aside to its own topic?


 * Why not?


 * It reflects a bias, don't you see that? By pushing it to a separate topic then wikipedians are expressing their opinion that this shouldn't be the primary information presented regarding the holocaust --"TMC"


 * No, I don't see at all how it reflects a bias. The words "Holocaust denial" describe the attitude of people who deny that a Holocaust occurred.  Now, you're correct when you say that Wikipedians are "expressing their opinion that this shouldn't be the primary information presented regarding the Holocaust," but this doesn't reflect bias in any useful sense of this term.  It reflects the leading view of the subject, which is a reasonable standard to order information.  See neutral point of view.


 * Larry, let me say first that I'm not trying to make any change to any of the entries regarding the holocaust, but I think that it stands as a very good example for the point I'm trying to make.


 * Would you see any bias if the status quo were reversed? If the entry for holocaust was primarily about how it was "claimed that some minorities might have been killed", and most of the evidence regarding the holocaust was instead placed in a Holocaust claimers entry instead?


 * I do understand your point about reflecting the leading view of a subject, but leading view is just another sort of bias. Whose view are we representing?  The view of eskimos?  The view of modern German neo-nazis?  The view of Hasidic Jews in New York?  The view of the average Chilean citizen?  Wikipedians are a self-selected group, and that self-selection is going to lead to implicit bias. --"TMC"


 * Why is there a topic called holocaust, instead of just a redirect to something like holocaust debate? Simply put, because the bias of the editors is showing in the very selection of the topics.


 * Why not all three, or even more? I am totally unconvinced.  This is, after all, a huge area.


 * Indeed, it is a huge area. But don't miss my point that the editorial decision of how to organize it reflects the bias of the editors. --"TMC"


 * I think you're misunderstanding a few parts of the nonbias policy. --Larry Sanger


 * Please, what points? --"TMC"


 * The editors believe that the holocaust happened, and that denial is wrong, and even though lip service is played to NPOV by presenting the denial, the bias shows in how the information is organized.


 * No. The whole point is that the article represents the leading view about the Holocaust; at some point in the article, that should be made clear.


 * BINGO! Someone on wikipedia has the bias that saying that the holocaust occured is the leading view, and that the article needs to reflect that bias.  I'm willing to sit here and say that I'm opionated and that my opinion is that the holocaust happened.  But I'm also willing to say that the "deniers" may be 100% correct, and I'm uncomfortable discounting their views. --"TMC"


 * Not to comment on your gullibility vis-a-vis Holocaust deniers (other than to say that ;-) ), we appear to have a semantic dispute on our hands. I simply fail to see why ordering information as we have, to represent the most common expert view in any field, reflects bias.  It simply does not, on my view. --Larry Sanger


 * Ordering information to reflect the most common expert view is just another way of expressing the bias of the experts. --"TMC"


 * Look at gun control, which gets its own topic, while gun rights is just a redirect to gun politics.


 * That's supposed to prove something?


 * Indeed, it does prove something. We have a socially debated issue, which there is still an attempt to "frame" by the debaters on both sides.  One side wants to frame the issue as being about "gun control", the other side wants to frame the issue as being about "gun rights".  But the editorial bias of wikipedia has allowed one camp to have its own topic, while the other camp is just redirected to "gun politics".  This is really no different than having an entry on "Israel", and then making "Palestine" be a redirect to "Isreal Politics".


 * My point is that the fact that somebody tried to frame that particular dispute in a biased way does not mean that relative neutrality is impossible. You can go and change the redirect, write an article under the title gun rights, and we'll put the meat of the debate under a more neutral title like gun politics or something like that.  The fact that people have been biased hardly means that something closely resembling neutrality is impossible.  (I fully admit that perfect neutrality is practically impossible; but I don't care about perfect neutrality.) --Larry Sanger


 * Redirecting death penalty to capital punishment shows one bias. Not redirecting abortion to feticide shows another bias.


 * These look like total nonstarters to me. I see no bias whatsoever in redirecting death penalty to capital punishment.  And why would we put information about a topic usually called "abortion" under any other name?


 * They may be nonstarters, but they still reflect a bias of the editors. I'm not saying this is bad, but the aknowledgement and awareness of bias should be made for the sake of a better wikipedia. --"TMC"


 * Where's the bias? I don't see it!  That's my point.  What's biased about redirecting "death penalty" to "capital punishment"?  You really need to read neutral point of view.  If, after having come to grips with it, you can provide cogent philosophical reasons against it, I'll be very impressed. --Larry Sanger


 * I don't personally think that Bushism is worthy of having its own topic. But that is my personal bias.  FWIW, "bushism" yields 6,840 hits on google and "bushims" yields 10,800.  So the phrase clearly has a meaning to the mainstream.


 * That's entirely beside the point. The words (to pick an example out of my hat) "Clinton's alleged rape victims" also have meaning, but we sure as heck don't want to have an article about that.


 * Yes, but what if "Clinton's alleged rape victims" had become such a popular social issue that it had spawned its own word, say Clintonistas. Would we avoid providing a Clintonista entry then? --"TMC"


 * The entire point here is that there are certain titles that necessarily frame the debate. You yourself seem to think that "Holocaust denial" frames the debate; but I disagree in that case.  (I could be wrong, I suppose.  You certainly haven't made a convincing case.)  Content can live under multiple different headings; given that everyone knows we should make a choice, the neutral point of view dictates that we pigeonhole the content in a place that is least prejudicial toward any particular view. --Larry Sanger


 * Maybe the big problem here is that there is no strong community sense of what is "worthy" to be in the wikipedia, and it is frowned on to run around deleting entire posts. I think that bushism doesn't belong here, because in general trivial lists of factoids that are critical of an individual don't belong in an encylopedia.  But if wikipedia is going to pander to triviality like Schurz, Nevada, then I certainly can't see banning bushism for being pointless.


 * Tell the 721 people living in Schurz that they are trivial. This information *is* useful and it harms no one.  On the other hand, this article has bias and after this discussion I am more convinced that it should disappear or as I suggested above moved to an article more suited for this information.  For instance, someone living in my hometown of Akron, Pennsylvania searching "Akron Pennsylvania" on google would hit the Wikipedia page as a first hit.  It is relevant information that generates important traffic for Wikipedia.  Every encyclopedia has this kind of information, this one just expands to add it to *all* places, even obscure ones.  I see this as a strength. -- -RM-


 * Is wikipedia an encylopedia, or a collection of census data? If you expand the information in wikipedia to "all places, even obscure", then there is nothing wrong with Lochwood Drive, 3465 Lochwood Drive, or 3465 Lochwood Drive, #B-10 --"TMC"


 * That's not why I want to get rid of it, though.


 * I tend to disagree with the notion that there is no strong sense about what belongs in Wikipedia. In most cases, there is perfect agreement.  It's only on the borderlines that there's any disagreement.


 * So, wikipedia is already full of bias. It is already full of trivia.  And even though I don't like bushism, I can't justify banning it.


 * To the extent that Wikipedia is in fact full of bias--according to the definition in neutral point of view, as opposed to some vague, impossible-to-fulfill notion--I deplore that fact. I don't mind trivia. --Larry Sanger


 * One person's trivia is another person's vital fact. That still doesn't make wikipedia a dictionary, a collection of quotes, a thesaurus, or an atlas.  Am I mistaken in pointing out that this is supposed to be an encylopedia?  See also my Lochwood Drive entries.


 * Look, I don't want this article (Bushism) to be at all, at least not unless the phrase takes on some historical significance. But when it gets deleted, I would love it if there was a clear understanding of why, and if that same standard was applied everywhere. --"TMC"

I wrote a 375-word article on discrediting tactics and redirected Bushisms and Goreisms to it. --Ed Poor 14:28 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Ed. Stormwriter


 * Shouldn't Hitler_has_only_got_one_ball be redirected there as well? By the way, I'm absolutly serious. Heck, I'll just do it myself. --"TMC"


 * no, because that is a song. Please don't remove content (as far as I can see, you just replaced that content with a reditect). An article on propaganda aimed against the enemy in WW2 would be very interesting, however. I read once about how the UK govt employed young women to translate obscenities about the German commanders into German to be printed on leaflets dropped onto occupied territories. Pictures, too. -- Tarquin 18:35 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)


 * I strongly disagree. First, wikipedia is not a repository for song lyrics, even neglecting the obvious copyright issues which I will address back on that topic.  Second, your exhortation to not remove "content" should apply just as well to the Bush topic being discussed here.  Finally, although you mention the idea of a general article on propaganda, that is not what the "one ball" article is about. --"TMC"


 * Please talk about that page on that page's talk page. And ... copyright? They're public domain, surely. -- Tarquin 22:39 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)


 * The title is vague. Maybe discrediting tactics in politics? --Larry Sanger


 * That sounds better. Then we could give the baby section at the bottom its own discrediting tactics in law article. --Ed Poor

It is very very hard, read impossible, not to come off sounding like an idiot if a bunch of smart-aleck reporters is listening to every word you say. Of all the American politicians I recall personally, only JFK was never flustered or ill-spoken.

When I covered "the mayor" Richard J. Daley, of Chicago, he made all sorts of ridiculous errors; "tantrum bicycle" for "tandem bicycle" was one of my favorites. We reporters used to get together after each press conference to agree on what he was trying to say so as to make his public utterances clear to the public for whom they were uttered. We didn't cover up for him, but we didn't make fun of him either. (Or, not often. I wrote "The Mayor got red-faced and angry."  He pounded the table, his face turned bright red and he screamed, "The Mayor does not get red-faced and angry!"). I put some of this quietly into the article and kept the rest to myself. These were all minor aspects of his dominating, but successful terms as mayor.

I don't like the Bushes, individually or collectively, but it is silly to play into the idea that they don't know what they are doing if you are their enemy. This stuff is trivial. The only "bushisms" worth noting are those that have something to do with his policies. "The folks who did this ...", for instance, reveals a certain cast of mind, but that observation would be much better in an article about him, just as Dan Quayle's much more serious stumbles belong in an article on him, not in an article on his stumbles. Bush has been sure-footed in his public pronouncements for the most part.

By the way, it was totally uncalled for to lump Hitler has only got one ball in with this article. There was some serious information in that (rather fun-loving) article. The serious information in this article has migrated to discrediting tactics. I hope the rest of it will migrate to George W. Bush. Ortolan88

Uggh. Here we go again.. Someone dust off the Goreisms page..

I find this page quite valuable for understanding 21st Century American politics. Lir 05:57 Nov 13, 2002 (UTC)

One more note. I did a Google search attempting to find the earliest reference to FOOism, where FOO was a national politician and it was clear that the -ism referred to a collection of quotes and not a set of beliefs. The oldest reference I could find was here, for "Quayleisms", which dates from 11-27-1990. I found no evidence of "Reaganism" being used in this sense prior to this date, so I believe that Dan Quayle has the distinction of being the "patient zero" of this wordsmithing. --"TMC"

Cunctator, moving "Bushisms" to "Bushism" was a bad idea, because "Bushisms" and "Goreisms" are sayings (some of them silly, embarrassing, or stupid), while Bushism is the emerging doctrine of the George W. Bush administration. Try searching Google for Bushism and then for Bushisms and you'll see what I mean.

See Weng Ming's scholarly article at http://www.uscc.gov/bush.pdf -- cached as HTML at http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:QHhkm7XTBhcC:www.uscc.gov/bush.pdf+bushism&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Surely, Bush's domestic political opponents are focusing on picking out embarrassing remarks. But let's not conflate emerging ideology with off-the-cuff speaking style.

Or let's write an article explaining the POV of partisans that the totality of Bush's character, platform and administration can best be understood via soundbites. But that would only be one POV, and the Wikpedia should neither endorse nor oppose it, just report on it. --Ed Poor

I'm going to move this article back to Meta, or just delete it. I invite everyone to join me in editing damaging quotation instead. We can put a few Goreisms and Bushisms in there, just so readers can understand what a damaging quotation is, and why partisans are so keen to collect them.

The Wikipedia, which is not permitted to be partisan, should not join either side in partisan activity. And "contributing to both sides" like a corporation that donates one million dollars each to Democrats and Republicans is just a case of two wrongs don't make a right.

Please don't fight me on this, but help build a good article. --Ed Poor

This new article seems like a rehash of discrediting tactics. How many articles on this subject are really necessary? I vote for eliminating this article as it now stands. soulpatch

Not a rehash. It's just one kind of discrediting tactic. Another kind is the "revelation of misdeeds".
 * Democrats waited until the weekend before the election to bring up a drunk-driving arrest (he's a drunk)
 * Republicans criticized Gore for avoiding combat in Vietnam (he's a coward)

Let's list all the different kinds of tactics partisans use to tear each other down, but let's not employ those tactics ourselves by perpetuating lists of damaging quotations. We have an article on pornography, but there's very little pornography on this site. --Ed Poor


 * The type of damaging quotation collected depends to some extent on the politician involved. Some politicians may have a particular propensity for making a particular type of statement which then lends itself to a particular source of ridicule. For example, some politicians might express frequent malapropisms or grammatical errors, and thus lists of quotations in such cases tend to focus on the politician's use of language. Other politicians might have a propensity for making reciting "facts" to make a point when such "facts" are actually untrue (e.g., "80 percent of all pollution comes from plants and trees").

Soulpatch, you wrote the above as if it were stating general rules, but each "rule" only apparently refers to one case each:
 * Bush - malaprops
 * Reagan - "untrue facts"

Let's try to find a way to include the point you are trying to make AND conform to NPOV at the same time. This is not censorship -- just editing. Work with me, pal. --Ed Poor


 * I think the point is that different politicians, because of their patterns of speaking, lend themselves to certain classes of damaging quotations. I will try to rewrite so that no "general rules" are being stated, but the point that I raised is an important one.  soulpatch

Okay, but be careful lest the article even seem to endorse the anti-Republican point of view implicit in the malaprops and "pollution from plants" things. One would have to be a simpleton not to realize that Bush and Reagan are meant. The "pollution" quote should be cited in full. Anyway, did Reagan really mean that 80% of ALL pollution came from vegetation, or just 80% of ONE PARTICULAR GAS? Was he wrong? Who says so? Did he ever recant his statement?

It's well known that partisans make up all sorts of things to drum up support for their cause. I'm not saying Republicans or Democrats do it more or less. (I am not a member of either party, fwiw.)

I hate to do this to ya, pal, but I'm gonna revert it again. It still looks like a partisan swipe against Republicans. --Ed Poor


 * I am not a member of either party, either. I tried to see how I could rewrite my text to accomodate your concerns, but I believe that I already did that.  I made no reference to Reagan or Bush when I rewrote it the second time, but you still took out my text.  Note that I took out the reference to Reagan's "pollution is caused by trees" comment.  I am citing no specific politician.  I am simply making the point that compendiums of quotations don't always come out of the blue.  The fact that different politicians are ridiculed for different things might have somethign to do a certain amount of reality, at least some times.  If one is famous for malapropisms, while another is famous for misstatements of fact, then perhaps that is why the different types of ridicule emerge.  If you disagree with my examples, then come up with some different politicians than the ones I cited.  Or rewrite the text in a way that is fairer t o both parties.  With all due respect, Ed, it seems to me that you have a tendency to engage in wholesale deletions of text without trying to incorporate the ideas contained within via some sort of rewrite, or at least try to take some of the ideas they contain and alter them or tone them down or change them to fit what you think is more balanced.  I am standing by my point, which is that the article should not take the position that these quotations lists are necessarily a bad thing.  I will concede the point that such quotations can be unfair, can be the source of urban legends, that they can feed on themselves and lack credibility, but I also want to suggest that they may ALSO, on the other hand, have some basis in reality, as illustrated by the fact that different politicians lend themselves to certain types of collected references, based on their own propensities for saying certain types of things.  If you can come up with Democratic politicians who illustrate this, then by all means do so.  soulpatch

Oops! United Nations Senate -- how could I have missed that one? That's why in a good shop, two other pairs of eyes read every line of code. Good catch, Brion.

"This article may be in the wrong category or belong in further categories."
When I added that tag, this article was in only one category: Political terminology. That category has the note "Pages in this category should be moved to subcategories where applicable."

--Rob Kelk 02:19, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

the article lacks a selection (no, not a list, ffs!) of examples of what it attempts to describe or define. it's currently vague to the point of obfuscation, & useless to anyone coming across the term for the first time. fix it or delete it.

duncanrmi (talk) 21:37, 13 March 2021 (UTC)