Talk:Pamela Geller/Archive 4

Problems with the article. Copied and pasted from the BLP discussion
This is a bad article because there is no narrative integration. It consists of a systematic isolation of criticisms, following by regular Geller defence statements. It is framed not in terms of encyclopedic notions of NPOV but in terms of the US television debate format, where a fringer and a moderate are given equal time, only here the fringer is given more time. So we have to ask ourselves why has WP:BLP been used to keep the page the way it is?. Compare similar pages on David Duke, Terry Jones, Robert Spencer, which are far superior in organization and detail.

The page reads more or less like an spokespage for Pamela Geller. It has no balance, and looks (perhaps the outcome is inadvertent) carefully structured to give an extensive documentation of her fringe extremist rants while carefully lowprofiling centrist, moderate criticism. How this is done, not very cleverly, can be shown by an examination of what occurs down to the point where the Anti-Defamation and SPLC are briefly mentioned.


 * Bradley Burston says (nothing about his description of her as the ‘P.T. Barnum of American hate-mongering or ’no Jewish organization that calls itself responsible should ever invite her to speak’, Geller is then given her reply


 * Rabbi Michael White (not quoted:’ “We teach that you stand up to hate speech, and what she writes and what she says is absolutely hate speech,”) and, Jerome Davidson state something, and Caroline Glick (not wikilinked to show where she's coming from) is cited to reply in Geller’s defence. As does Charles Jacobs, (not wikilinked to show where he's coming from). Cathy Young (not wikilinked, idem) takes the middle path.


 * The Career section is a travesty of neutrality. While she has attacked personally many Jews and Jewish organizations, we then get a series of statements of her pro-Israel stance, cited at length This stands alone, with no mention in that context of the many Jewish writers who find her rhetoric and extremism repellent.(Jeffrey Goldberg, Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster (Rabbis for Human Rights), Rabbi Eric Yoffie (‘Pamela Geller has no place in an American synagogue. She is a bigot and purveyor of hate."’), the controversies over her appearances as various synogogues or ZOA venues (Thorn Hill, Toronto; ZOA Los Angeles, Long Island etc ). Her defamatory statements defining Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, and George Soros as ‘killers’ stand there. Geller’s right to have her page cleansed by BLP considerations does not apply to the people she describes as murderers.

Technically, one needs a section listen the dozen major statements of Jewish critics, from rabbis to scholars, followed by her defense, and that should be in a section on its own. We don't have it.


 * Stop Islamization of America and Park 51. Again a long exposition in three paras of her fringe views, with a large quote. Balance? This is what we get


 * Ibrahim Hooper is given his quote, and then Eric Boehlert cited in support, but the statement from the same source (Media Matters) is spliced with a ‘balancing’ disruption by Andrew C.McCarthy’s criticism of Hooper. At this point a very brief note is made of the ADL and SPLC’s papers, capped by Geller’s dismissal of the latter as ‘’uber left’’.

Bradley Burston cited both these organizations for classifying her organization as an ‘active hate group’ and ‘extremist’, and therefore the ADL/SPLC statement, as did CBS which cites both together in the following way "The Anti-Defamation League accused the group of “consistently vilifying the Islamic faith.” The SPLC called Geller “the anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead,”" The Jewish Week here, The Times of Israel here, The Nation here The San Francisco Bay Guardian here, the Institute for Policy Studies, here, the Huffington Post here, Newsday here, Daily Kos here, CNN here,  Jweekly here, to cite just a handful of many available prime sources which cite both the ADL and SPLC overlapping judgements with regard to Geller. Editor must not outmanoeuver their sources by quibbling. Conclusion. The article is highlighting Geller's statements, virulent, extremist and abusive, and then carefully tidying and restricting the criticisms they elicit. Specifically, the desire to repress what happens to be a synthetic judgements by: two major US organizations specializing in hate speech analysis by confining it to a virtual note in midtext fits this pattern. WP:BLP is being improperly used to keep the page weighed towards Geller's fringe views while 'neutralizing' major sources, appropriate to the lead, which show what the mainstream think of them. Nishidani (talk) 17:19, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I can't help but note that you put the extremely NON-RS Daily Kos into the mix. It pretty much negates your entire argument and puts the rest of your sources into question.  In the future, if you wish to promote your POV, stay away from clearly biased non-reliable sources to do so.  Arzel (talk) 17:58, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Okay thats a new one. One link that you dislike puts into question a list of clearly reliable sources. Good luck with that one.  nableezy  - 19:06, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * You seem to have missed the point completely. Plus it is not a dislike issue, the DK is not a reliable source by any measure.  Arzel (talk) 20:40, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * (ec)That's spelt 'extremely'. Oh really? (Klaus Dodds, Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2007 p.161 would beg to differ, thinking it an important monitor of American news outlet distortions). Do you realize the 'logic' of sighting one challengeable source in the 11 I have cited, and using its (non-article) presence on a talk page to automatically disinvalidate the other impeccably mainstream RS? The next time you go to a baseball game, try and argue that one strike out cancels a team's score, and eliminates any homers, other than the Simpsons.
 * American Thinker fantastic;Politicogreat1; Snopes.com terrific; Algemeiner Journal utterly RS; Human Events is of course RS, despite the fact that it is so far out it lists John Dewey's Democracy and Education, and Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money among the most harmful books of the 20th century. Arutz Sheva is not citable, per numerous discussions, for anything regarding Israel and its occupied territories; Talking Points Memo, AOL News,AlterNet. None of those sources spoils the page, by your logic.Nishidani (talk) 19:27, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, that plus "The Nation" and "HuffPo". The point is, if you have to resort to extremely biased sources and those that are not reliable in the least (DK). then the likelihood that your argument is crap goes up significantly.  In your effort to prove your point of view, you have to resort to crap resources.  Arzel (talk) 20:38, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmmm.. . Sigh . Yawn. . .The issue of the lead formulation is resolved, with amenable intelligence. The rest, like the content of so many portentous divagations by the subject, is blather. Well done, L&G., Jason, and Gamaliel for the mediation (and the sensivitity to language in eliding 'private'. Wiki works, when wikipedians work.Nishidani (talk) 07:11, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
 * There’s certainly some organizational issues as her activities are on-going and additions were made piecemeal. I’d start by getting rid of the “Claims” section since every section has claims and counter-claims. Jason from nyc (talk) 12:11, 10 August 2013 (UTC)


 * The main reason for the lack of focus is simple. There are too many minor incidents from her blog. A blog is “thinking out load” and there are many thoughts that she considered that never made it into any of her 200+ articles or her books. These tentative considerations are often absurd and embarrassing. They make good material for critics but never became a recurring theme in her work. Because critics understandably seize upon these absurdities they make it into reliable publications. Since they are true, we can’t remove them--at least not without consensus. As a consequence the article looks more like a gossip column. Jason from nyc (talk) 12:11, 10 August 2013 (UTC)


 * An encyclopedia would stick to the main points--the recurring themes of here work as well as her major campaigns. The first thing I would do (if we could agree) is to get rid of the silly passing comments on Obama’s background. This has little to do with her activities on Islam or even her political opposition to Obama. Jason from nyc (talk) 12:11, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Generally agree with most of what you say. I think we have numerous articles, far more developed (some I noted above, last night) which could serve as a model. I much prefer, when someone has published books, for those to have sections together with critical responses. The problem is, very few serious people appear to take much note of her books (my check may have been superficial) and to privilege them at the expense of her blog outbursts might look like a clean-out of embarrassing statements she's best known for. But I'd be very wary of excerpting the wilder statements, like that on Obama's Malcolm X connection. I think, also, that her blog should be cited only as its contents are refracted in mainline journalistic sources. That last measure would allay some of your worries here about trivia. (Most political discourse is trivia, though powerfully effective trivia. But that's just my POV. : Perhaps we should spend some time deliberating on a new page structure? Nishidani (talk) 12:45, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Let’s see what we can do about structure. Let me suggest one as a way to start the discussion:


 * 1 Early life, education, and early career
 * 2 Activism
 * 2.1 Opposition to the Khalil Gibran International Academy
 * 2.2 Stop Islamization of America
 * 2.2.1 Opposition to Park51
 * 2.2.2 Paid Ads on Public Transportation
 * 3 Writing
 * 3.1 Viewpoints on Islam
 * 3.2 Published works
 * 3.3 Blog
 * 4 List of published works
 * Comments? Jason from nyc (talk) 15:38, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Edit request - date formats
In order to fix the Category:CS1 errors: dates in this article and move towards MOS:DATEUNIFY, could someone please make these changes? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:07, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Reference 18 - change date to "May 25, 2011" and add origyear=2010
 * Reference 47 - change date to "December 8, 2009" and accessdate to "September 14, 2010"
 * Reference 90 - change date to "September 27, 2012"
 * Reference 92 - change accessdate to "September 21, 2012"
 * Yes check.svg Done -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:36, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

another source


How a Group of Christians Smearing Muslims Benefits the Jewish State Washington Report on Middle East Affairs By Cathail, Maidhc, Magazine article from Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Vol. 31, No. 8

Notwithstanding Goldberg's terse dismissal of an Israeli connection, the Jew-libeling Christians actually turned out to have close ties to the pro-Israel Islamophobia network led by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer

SION, whose similarity to Zion is hardly coincidental, stands for "Stop Islamization of Nations," a group co-founded by Geller and Spencer 

As with most of the mainstream media's coverage of the post-Bacile story, the McClatchey report made no mention of Morris Sadek's ties to the Geller-Spencer Islamophobia network or his extreme pro-Israel views

I am sure this would make an interesting addition to the BLP. Collect (talk) 18:25, 1 January 2014 (UTC)


 * With quotes like "SION, whose similarity to Zion is hardly coincidental" and ending with "it's not too difficult to speculate as to the most likely source of that income" it seems like a hoax or conspiracy theory. Jason from nyc (talk) 18:37, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I have no opinion, but we should probably evaluate http://www.wrmea.org/about-wrmea.html MilesMoney (talk) 18:45, 1 January 2014 (UTC)


 * WP:RS for sure -- noted journalists writing for it etc. Actually a better source than a book on religion conflicts which does not delve deeply into the topic at hand.  And it would clearly show the nature of some of the opinions being presented.  Cheers. Collect (talk) 21:56, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
 * It may well be reliable, but it's not as good a source as the Harvard book, which is written by an academic expert in the field, not just a journalist. MilesMoney (talk) 22:15, 1 January 2014 (UTC)