Talk:Nicholas von Hoffman

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birth date? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.215.29.149 (talk • contribs) April 5, 2007

According to this source his DOB is October 16, 1929. I will add it to the article. -InvisibleSun 04:15, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

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Text

 * After the US sent troops to Afghanistan, von Hoffman predicted the United States and its allies would be defeated shortly after the fall of Kabul. Shortly thereafter the Taliban retreated and the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar fell; columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan thus created a parody Von Hoffman Award for egregiously bad predictions. However, the George W. Bush administration tactic of bribing warlords allowed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to retain command, and as of 2007 the U.S.-backed government was making offers in negotiation: "The contacts [were] a tacit recognition from the coalition and the Taliban that, in the short term at least, neither side [was] capable of winning the Afghan war." In 2009, "the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, admitted that the insurgency...held the upper hand." 

Discussion
The material in bold was deleted by an editor with the comment "Has nothing to do with Hoffman". It was restored by another editor, who said "History proved him right". It appears to me that this is an effort to vindicate von Hoffman's prediction by using original research. We should only use sources that refer to von Hoffman. So if we find an article that says, "As predicted by von Hoffman, the war in Afghainistan...." then we should use that. Otherwise this material isn't part of the biography of von Hoffman. I suggest that we add a link to War in Afghanistan (2001–present) and delete the material from here. If readers are interested in the longterm success of the war they can read the history elsewhere.  Will Beback   talk    17:53, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for discussing and I see your point about WP:NOR. Another issue is the links in the first sentences of the paragraph no longer work. So, I'm looking for source links that work, and for sources addressing both subjects together. A difficulty so far is, a lot of material (including the original prediction itself) has been archived and no longer appears in search results. (I did find a possible excerpt, but the date is wrong - there was no November 14 2001 issue of the NY Observer.) As for the two sentences in bold, perhaps we could delete the first one, which is by far the longest, but leave the last one and add the link that you suggested?TVC 15 (talk) 20:41, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The NRO blog has the wrong date - the von Hoffman column was printed November 19. However that may have been just a cover date as I found a November 17, 2001, editorial in the Rocky Mountain News that references Sullivan's "award". Sullivan bestowed the award at least twice, Oct 25, 2002 and Apr 11, 2003.    Will Beback    talk    21:24, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if it might make sense to delete the whole paragraph. Andrew Sullivan gives several named "awards", but mention of them seems confined to the blogosphere, and most are not mentioned on WP except in Sullivan's own biography. Hugh Hewitt's bio mentions the "Hewitt Award," but Sullivan appeared as a guest on Hewitt's show so there is at least some connection between their lives. In contrast, so far I haven't found any indication of Nicholas Von Hoffman ever reacting to Sullivan or the "Von Hoffman Award." Michael Moore's bio doesn't mention Sullivan's "Moore Award," Michelle Malkin's bio doesn't mention Sullivan's "Malkin Award," so maybe Von Hoffman's bio shouldn't mention Sullivan's "Von Hoffman Award" until sources show notable relevance to Von Hoffman's life story.TVC 15 (talk) 23:29, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Fine with me. I think that at most it'd be worth saying that his prediction was criticized, without mentioning the award. But given that von Hoffman has written hundreds if not thousand of columns, it does seem like a minor blip.   Will Beback    talk    01:42, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

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External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20041030215454/http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5576 to http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5576

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Dead Dead Mouse Link
The Dead Mouse link is Dead. It seems to go to a page, but not the one that's intended. I poked around in the edit history to find the approximate time it was added and then in archive.org for that time period, and I think this is either the appropriate article or a suitable substitute if someone wants to edit it in: https://web.archive.org/web/20070930184741/http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110003187 (It's too bad archive.org doesn't have an arrangement to guarantee the links in Wikipedia stay current.) Netsettler (talk) 22:02, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Something should go in. The rat vs mouse problem seems to be like the "Berenstein Bears" from the beginning, where Nicholas von Hoffman is sure he said mouse, but many heard rat. It doesn't help that many of the mentions on the net use rat, but credit a previous version of this article. AndroidCat (talk) 20:54, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Vietnam War Quote
It was attributed to Senator Aiken, but von Hoffman was the one who originally proposed that we simply declare victory and leave. 74.119.231.16 (talk) 14:58, 18 October 2019 (UTC)captcrisis

External links modified (February 2018)
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20041211111811/http://www.observer.com/pages/story_lookup.asp?story=National%20Observer to http://www.observer.com/pages/story_lookup.asp?story=National%20Observer

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