Talk:George Santos/Archive 4

Brazilian
There was originally a sentence in the lead describing Santos as the first Brazilian-American in congress. It was removed for unknown reasons (despite several other "firsts" listed) and the page has since been edit-protected. Please return this to the lead paragraph. 173.244.8.254 (talk) 02:19, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Source? Slatersteven (talk) 11:53, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It's not even accurate. Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA3) is primarily a Portuguese American (unsurprising from her state with its huge population of that ancestry), but her paternal grandmother was born in Brazil so she is considered the first Brazilian American elected to Congress.
 * Santos can be more readily counted as:
 * the first Brazilian American Republican elected to Congress,
 * the first Brazilian American man elected to Congress,
 * the first LGBT Brazilian American elected to Congress, and
 * the first Brazilian American elected to Congress whose ancestry was exclusively Brazilian.
 * However, those are rather narrowly defined firsts, and not the sort of thing we usually put in article intros. And in any event we'd need sourcing saying that. Daniel Case (talk) 21:19, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There are several sources:
 * https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/01/george-santos-brazil-shame/
 * https://www.metroweekly.com/2022/11/gay-republican-wins-long-island-congressional-seat-in-historic-first/
 * Lori Trahan is not Brazilian. Her own article states that her paternal grandmother "was born in Brazil to Portuguese parents and moved to the Azores to live with relatives as a child after her mother's death." Meaning that her grandmother was not ethnically Brazilian. And as to the "not the sort of thing we usually put in article intros" argument:
 * Debbie Mucarsel-Powell: "Mucarsel-Powell was the first Ecuadorian American and first South American-born immigrant to serve as a member of the U.S. Congress."
 * Robert Garcia: "He is the first Peruvian-American to be elected to Congress."
 * Dalip Singh Saund: "He was the first Sikh, Indian American, and Asian American elected to the United States Congress."
 * Daniel Inouye: "Inouye was the first Japanese American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives."
 * Daniel Akaka: "Akaka was the first U.S. Senator of Native Hawaiian ancestry."
 * In fact, this is something relatively common for most ethnic "first" politicians and was actually on Santos's page until it was removed for no reason.173.244.8.254 (talk) 01:29, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I was unaware there was an ethnic component to Brazilian identity, any more than there is really one to American identity that doesn't exist independent of, well, other considerations that we really probably don't want to go into here. As for Trahan, if you hadn't been racing to gatekeep you might, I suppose, have read or reread what I actually wrote, which was what you reiterated. Whether that is significant enough to make her Brazilian American is emphatically not something for Wikipedia to decide. I would note that she herself appears to have no problem embracing Brazil as part of her identity. Call her office and ask that she stop referring to Brazil as part of her background because one of her grandparents emigrated from Brazil to Portugal, and report back to us as to how that goes.
 * As for your own bulleted list of examples, you are proving my point, or at least not disproving it. All of yours are of the form "first person of a particular national background". None of them are "first man/LGBT/whatever of a particular national background." Daniel Case (talk) 16:30, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Except that this is Wikipedia, meaning that Lori Trahan's claims on her identity, which I'm sure are not at all influenced by the massive Brazilian population in Massachusetts, are so far unusable according to our need for third-party sources (which you admitted we needed), nor is she listed as Brazilian at List of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States Congress. In fact, there is a "Brazilian" component to ethnicity due exactly to those considerations that, well, we probably shouldn't really go into here. Considerations that would make Trahan as authentically Brazilian as Lily Wu is authentically Guatemalan. But even if we didn't get into that complicated subject, since I just gave multiple sources, and there are none that I can find so far relating to Trahan (in fact, several specifically describe her as the first Portuguese-American woman and nothing else despite her own claims), we should put this in Santos's lead. After all, I have proven that "first person of a particular national background" is fairly normal.
 * That being said, if you wanted several examples of "first man/LGBT/whatever of a particular national background..."
 * Michelle Steel, Young Kim, and Marilyn Strickland: "Steel, fellow California Republican Young Kim and Democrat Marilyn Strickland of Washington are the first Korean-American women to serve in Congress." All three of these pages have something of that nature in the lead.
 * Mayra Flores: "first female Mexican-born member of the House." That's somehow even more specific.
 * Pramila Jayapal: "She is the first Indian-American woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives."
 * Mark Takano: " Takano became the first gay person of Asian descent in Congress upon taking office." This one is actually the EXACT same situation for Santos.
 * Tammy Duckworth: "Duckworth is the first Thai American woman elected to Congress."
 * Judy Chu: "Chu is the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress."
 * So... since we've determined that Santos is, according to Wikipedia's own rules, the "first Brazilian-American" elected to Congress, and since we've also determined that your own subsequent statements are false, what else do you have? 173.244.8.254 (talk) 21:47, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That this claim was taken out of the article over a year ago as "unsubstantiated". Perhaps you should take it up with the editor who removed it before spouting off here. The fact that no one has restored it since then suggests to me that it would at least be better to get consensus on this (a good idea anyway in an article that comes under two contentious topic areas and has accordingly been given long-term semi-protection). This back-and-forth hardly rises to that standard.
 * I would also note that the most recent source I can find mentioning this claim, a Washington Post article on Brazilians' reaction to Santos's expulsion, qualifies this with "said to be the first Brazilian American elected to Congress" (emphasis mine). So I think perhaps if such a weighty source as the Post isn't sure about this, we shouldn't be either, especially in something BLP-relevant.
 * I would be remiss if I ended my response to you here without pointing out how your arguments don't really make sense. First, we are discussing whether it can be unambiguously stated that Santos is the first Brazilian American elected to Congress, not whether Lori Trahan was. The absence of that claim in her article is non-dispositive of whether we can say that about Santos. And speculation about her reasons for statements strongly implying that she considers herself Brazilian American as well as Portuguese American similarly have no bearing on the question.
 * As for the quotes you assembled, I don't really see them as seriously disturbing my point. You err with Takano, actually, in that he is described specifically as the first gay Asian. Asian American is an ethnic identity, not a national one as "Brazilian" definitely is. I also think in that case that distinction is more significant since there had already been plenty of Asians elected to Congress; whereas Santos is either the first or second Brazilian American.
 * I will assume in good faith that when you said my statements were "false", you meant to use something like "incorrect", which does not have the connotation of suggesting that I was willfully misstating things. If you did mean it that way, then you are failing to assume good faith, and this discussion is over. Daniel Case (talk) 20:10, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You are just grasping for straws at this point. Going from the exact description, it says that Lori Trahan is the first Brazilian American, and uses the exact same argument you just made. I'm sorry but until we have a valid source for that quote, it does not matter. If the WaPo article is not good enough for you, here's another one:
 * https://www.metroweekly.com/2022/11/gay-republican-wins-long-island-congressional-seat-in-historic-first/. Not to mention the disingenuous argument that "was said to be" means not sure. It simply means he was said to be. And he was, in fact, said to be by reliable sources that I just linked.
 * I do say that about Takano, but you also deliberately ignore the four to five other links I just gave.
 * So anyways, a reliable source has been given citing Santos as the first Brazilian American in congress. Are we done here or are you going to keep dancing around the point. 173.244.8.254 (talk) 00:43, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That MetroWeekly article was written just after Santos was elected, over a month before the Times article that blew everything wide open about how he lied. It reads like a recycled press release, really. While we have no reason to doubt the publication's reliability, that does not mean that we have to include it; just because something is in an RS does not mean we have to treat it as gold since "reliable" does not mean "infallible". And frankly I would give more credit to the Post's more recent way of putting it. Your my-way-or-the-highway attitude (frankly, you sound like you could start a fight with an empty room, and for all I know probably have ... I wouldn't be surprised if you get regular Christmas cards from every drywall hanger in the Salem area) notwithstanding, this discussion has not established the necessary consensus for inclusion, as you have been spectacularly unsuccessful at persuading anyone else to take your side, much less participate . But I would propose anyway that this discussion could be summed up in an endnote as it once was. Maybe that will make you happy? Daniel Case (talk) 19:13, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In other words: "I won't include it because I don't want to." Someone's real invested in me if you're running my IP back. I don't care what you think the definition of reliable sources is. You have come up with excuse after excuse to backtrack your own requirements for inclusion. Let's treat it like it is, which is you not wanting it there. Not to mention it originally was there until someone, perhaps you, removed it. Reliable sources have been cited. We're done here. 173.244.8.254 (talk) 20:51, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Including it would not be solely my decision; in that context I do find it interesting, however, that no one else has joined this thread to take your side. If nothing else, that shows a lack of consensus for your proposed edit. Your position and my position on inclusion are non-dispositive in the absence of others having one. You have characterized my arguments as "backtracking your requirements for inclusion"; that to me is what is usually called "pointing out the deficiencies in my argument" by people who can't accept that they have not prevailed. If you "don't care what [I] think the definition of reliable sources is", then you really ought not to be editing Wikipedia as that has more or less proved a battleground mentality on your part. As for your wild claim that I may have been the editor who removed that claim from the article originally, that is clearly disproven by this 14-month-old diff which I posted upthread. Either you didn't bother to look at it, which is kind of reckless on your part if you're going to make allegations such as these, or you did and made the allegation anyway, meaning it was willfully and knowingly false. If you are insinuating sockpuppetry on my part, that is not an allegation to be made so casually; people have gotten blocked indefinitely for doing things like that. You had best be prepared to back it up. At the very least it is getting very hard to assume you are editing in good faith. Since it's actually rather easy to look up your IP, I don't see what that says about me; I had to be certain you weren't working for someone with an interest (which you still may be; I don't know). I wonder what you think it says about you that, over a week after my response, you came back all full of piss and vinegar. To me it says that you were, perhaps, balled up in a fetal position on the floor for most of that time, too terrified to go out, avoiding nearby windows out of some fear that I had commissioned an elite assassin of the kind usually found only on movies and TV to take you out with a single shot from a great distance. That was certainly not my intention. Honestly I thought you had decided to walk away from this without saying so, which was the smarter move. But instead you screwed up your courage and came back a week later so, as far as I can tell, to prove to me that a hit dog hollers. You are so determined to prove that that you completely ignored the reasonable compromise offer I made of an endnote, an offer that is still open if you want to work out the wording. And lastly I highly doubt that we're done here. If we were, you would have just left as I thought you had. You posted this to get a response and salvage your wounded pride. I hope that latter aspect worked for you. Daniel Case (talk) 02:14, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 February 2024
Please add the following categories:

Category:21st-century American politicians Category:21st-century American LGBT people 98.228.137.44 (talk) 01:11, 8 February 2024 (UTC)


 * ✅ Well, the first category was already there. Daniel Case (talk) 03:23, 8 February 2024 (UTC)