Talk:Sharon Cissna

Missing parts of "Who is Sharon Cissna?"
WP:COI upfront disclosure - my political activities have closely intersected with those of Sharon Cissna at various points in the past. That's about all the detail I can go into without revealing my identity.

Sharon Cissna has been in the public eye since 1969 that I'm personally aware of. I suspect most of this depends upon obscure, hard-to-find and possibly decades-old sources to establish, however.

Cissna's earliest political activities were with an ad-hoc group which advocated for the establishment of Chugach State Park. She was been referred to as "the mother of Chugach State Park," but I couldn't tell you whether that phrase was ever used apart from a purely promotional context.

Her first campaign for the House was in 1972, in which she did not gain nomination in the Democratic primary (page 19 of this document). Thelma Buchholdt and Ben Grussendorf, both deceased, were also younger Democrats who ran unsuccessfully in this primary and later went on to have distinguished careers in the legislature. I haven't the time to do the research for this, but I believe she was a member of the Ad Hoc Organizing Committee of Young Democrats, an important organization in its day. Two of the three youngest-ever members of the House (Terry Gardiner and Russ Meekins, Jr.), were elected in 1972 from this organization. The four speakers of the House following Tom Fink (including Gardiner) were all under age 40. I also can't remember whether she ever ran again until 1996. The Alaska Elections site I link to above does contain complete results of Alaska primary and general elections dating back to 1960. I catch a certain whiff of portraying her legislative service as a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington sort of deal, rather than already an insider-of-sorts for years.

The description of her as widowed is false and misleading. She remarried ca. 2007, which as far as I'm aware is her third marriage. Her first husband (and father of her daughter) was Edward F. Naughton (1930-2002), who represented Kodiak in the House from 1973 to 1977. This may be another relevant tie to her early political activities, as the sources suggest that she and Naughton were married during the time he served in the House. That should be pretty easy to establish, albeit perhaps through contemporary sources (which I don't have access to at the moment). More easily available sources do state that she lived in Kodiak from 1974 to 1978, which is missing from the article. She was widowed from Stanley Robbins, who was also heavily involved with Cissna politically. He died ca. 1999. A slew of recent sources mention that she is married to Sid Atwood.

The Alaskan media reacted to her announcement by describing her as a career back-bencher in the legislature running a single-issue campaign against Young. Strange how that's missing from the article, but the description of recent events is chock full of weasel words and complimentary language.RadioKAOS (talk) 01:42, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I would like to point out that I had gone to post the news of Carl Gatto's sudden, though not wholly unexpected, death, a week ago. Though I had gone there to take note of his passing rather shortly after the announcement, someone else had already updated it, so there was no need for me to do so. I read the Wikipedia article on him at that time.


 * A few days later, I read the article about Rep. Cissna announcing her candidacy and then went to the Wikipedia page about her. There was almost no textual information about her. She has had a considerably higher profile in Alaska for many years than has Gatto, as I expect you're acutely aware. So now she's the sole declared candidate opposing Don Young, and there's no info, so I supplied some. It was augmented not long afterward by another Wikipedia poster who included substantially more biographical info than I had. Given the information released by the Department of Justice this past week, after Cissna's announcement, her candidacy takes on an entirely new aspect, especially since Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is pressing for the further release of the draft Young indictment and other redacted or withheld materials. I think that your characterizing Richard Mauer's Anchorage Daily News Wednesday article as regarding her as a "single issue" candidate is not NPOV. Please reread it, if that's the article to which you're referring. I didn't read any other article about her candidacy though I know one appeared in the Alaska Dispatch on Thursday. I expect one would have appeared in the Juneau Empire but often they simply publish AP copy of important state events. Mauer didn't describe her even obliquely as a "back bencher," so I'm not sure what media you're referring to, and his piece would likely be that which would have been most widely read. I included a link to the article from February 2011 which included the following. (My italics.) I would appreciate it if you would please point out precisely what "weasel words" you believe I used to describe her experience...


 * State Rep. Sharon Cissna's now-famous run-in with the TSA last weekend was not where her problems with the full-body scanner began. Her problems began in November, when she was returning home from a trip to Seattle. That was when she encountered the scanner for the first time. She went through. Agents told her there was an anomaly detected on her chest. They said they would need to do a pat-down. A female agent took her aside. Cissna had breast cancer eight years ago and lost one of her breasts. She has never been private about her cancer. She even sent an e-mail to the Legislature before her surgery, saying the House of Representatives was about to have one less boob. Now she wears a prosthesis made of a foam or gel-like material in her bra. Cissna explained all this to the TSA woman. The woman didn't care. "She was giving me orders and being nasty to me about it," Cissna said. This was not happening in a private place, Cissna said. It was happening in view of other travelers. Cissna's luggage rolled out the end of the X-ray machine and sat unattended. She kept asking that someone keep an eye on it. No one did, she said. The woman put on gloves and worked her way up her chest on both sides, pressing hard, Cissna said. Cissna was shocked. It was nothing like the light security pat-downs she experienced previously. The agent was "putting her fingers on and around the breast on both sides," she said. The woman touched under her bra and felt her mastectomy scar. Then she let Cissna go. Cissna called the pat-down traumatic. Like many women, Cissna has a history that includes what she called a "violating experience." The public pat-down brought all those old emotions back up, she said. It bothered her for a long time and even caused some nightmares, she said. She decided she would never do it again. Read more here: http://community.adn.com/adn/node/155934#storylink=cpy


 * Again, please be so kind as to point out which words I used were allegedly "weasel words," hopefully giving reference to the story above which I referenced. Lastly, thank you for pointing out her current husband is still alive. Having read the article I feared that she might have been widowed a third time. Twice widowed and a cancer survivor, she's had entirely enough tragedy in her life, wouldn't you agree?


 * The excesses and the shortcomings of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are hardly confined to experiences such as those Rep. Cissna and likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions of others, have undergone. For instance, this week's article in the Wall Street Journal, "Why Airport Security Is Broken— And How To Fix It," raises quite different and substantial criticisms. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303815404577335783535660546.html Activist (talk) 04:00, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

In the absence of a response from you, I reviewed the stories about Cissna's announcement in the Juneau Empire and Fairbanks News-Miner newspapers, and the Alaska Dispatch, which seems to be the leading web publication in the state of Alaska. None of them support your view that Cissna is viewed as a "back bencher". I would appreciate your removal of the advisory on this section of the title page if it was you who placed it there. Activist (talk) 15:57, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Excuse me, but I'm busy earning a living right now, which does not involve sitting in front of a computer. Hooray for smartphones, at least I can write this.  I'll be happy to deal with all this when I am able to.  Funny how her past history as a professional political activist is being completely whitewashed.  If that's mirrored in the campaign, I'll be even more suspicious.  I could respond to the sources you presented with "selective sourcing" when you consider that her announcement was obviously a lot more widely reported than that.


 * Excuse me, but I read the stories regarding Cissna's announcement in the Snooze, the News-Minus, and the Vampire. The Peninsula Clarion republished the Vampire article. So that's 100,000 circulation total. (ADN 71,000, FNM 15,000, JE 7,000, PC 6,000)  That probably constitutes 90% of the circulation of all newspapers in the entire state. I referenced the Dispatch as well, in my note to you. So how do you come to the conclusion that I've done "selective sourcing?" Activist (talk) 09:47, 17 April 2012 (UTC)


 * The issues that I see: we have a typical sanitized Internet biography here. If all I'm reading is a mirror of other Internet sites, then what do I need Wikipedia for?  Additionally, the recent edits and talk page discussion reveals potential WP:COATRACK, WP:NOTNEWS and WP:RECENT issues with the article.  I'd hazard a guess that this article will become a prime candidate for the BLP noticeboard regardless of what you or I do.RadioKAOS (talk) 03:01, 17 April 2012 (UTC)


 * The issue that I have is that you characterized my posting as using "weasel words," though not a single one of those words or phrases I used fits that definition. I asked you to remove your alert from the section. Please do so ASAP. Furthermore, I haven't "sanitized" anything. Quite the contrary. My contributions exclusively were limited to the TSA and 2012 sections. Neither did I write anything that "mirrored" anything on other Internet sites. If you have problems with what other editors contributed, I suggest you address those problems to them. You've attacked what I've written with pejoratives and you should be apologizing, rather than doubling down.


 * The Wikipedia definition of "Weasel words" is as follows "... some people say, many scholars state, it is believed, many are of the opinion, most feel, experts declare, it is often reported, it is widely thought, research has shown, science says ..." Phrases such as these present the appearance of support for statements but can deny the reader the opportunity to assess the source of the viewpoint. They are referred to as "weasel words" by Wikipedia contributors. They can pad out sentences without adding any useful information and may disguise a biased view. Claims about what people say, think, feel, or believe, and what has been shown, demonstrated, or proved should be clearly attributed.[5] The examples given above are not automatically weasel words, as they may also be used in the lead section of an article or in a topic sentence of a paragraph, whereby the article body or the rest of the paragraph supplies attribution.


 * If you feel that some salient content is missing from the article, I submit that you should add it yourself. You have correctly noted that Cissna is currently married, but you haven't corrected the Cissna article which would have been easier to do than to characterize it as "false and misleading," implicitly criticizing another poster. The News Minus article mentioned her recently traveling by canoe down the Yukon with her "husband," and that article is sourced by her own statements. Activist (talk)

Getting back to this while I still have a little time: I do have a photo, but at the rate I'm going, who knows when I'll have the time to upload what is getting to be hundreds of photos. I'll see what I can do. The rest of Wikipedia obviously gave up on giving a shit about covering this race once it became obvious that Roll Call's speculation of a Don Young versus Joe Miller contest turned out to be all bullshit.

Regarding the issues I mentioned previously: had just enough time today to play around with NewsBank, wherein I found this:  Relevant excerpts follow:"On the Democratic side, Ann Spohnholz, a well-known party regular, is facing Sharon Cissna, a community activist who years ago helped push for creation of Chugach State Park.""'I prefer the grass-roots involvement, which I think makes me unique', Cissna said. Back in 1969-70, she led a cadre that persuaded the Legislature to create Chugach State Park. She tried in 1972 for a seat on the Legislature but lost to Russ Meekins Jr. She has worked as a legislative aide, and she ran the campaigns of former Rep. Ed Naughton of Kodiak when they were married. She is co-chair of Alaskan Voters for an Open Primary, which fought the Republican plan for a mail-in primary. Cissna now works with troubled kids as a family therapist and runs a home-based publication business on the side. She has a grown daughter and is married."I faintly recalled reading this article when it first appeared in print, so I was glad to be able to find it again rather easily. As I contended in the first place, Cissna has historically been known as a political activist first and a working professional second.  The above article excerpts, from her 1996 campaign, present her exactly in that light.  What little coverage I've been able to look up from her 1972 campaign is more or less similar.

If she currently wishes to be known as a working professional first and a political activist second, that's fine. However, we shouldn't use the standard poor approach to sourcing Wikipedia articles (read: "If it can't be Googled, it doesn't exist") as an excuse to commit historical revisionism. Like I hinted at before, I can go to any number of other websites to read politically skewed biographies. If she all of a sudden wishes to make the world believe this is Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington, hoping that the few who know better have better things to do than to object to the inherent neutrality issues, I should read that on those websites, not here. It's almost similar to the constant flip-flopping on the part of her House colleague Peggy Wilson on whether or not she should include in her biography that she previously served in the North Carolina House of Representatives. Since Wilson left it out at just the right time, it's not in her Wikipedia article, despite Wilson becoming a minor political celebrity for having been recognized as the first woman to serve in the legislatures of two different states.

You posted the following above:"Cissna had breast cancer eight years ago and lost one of her breasts. She has never been private about her cancer."If "she has never been private about her cancer", then something tells me that would be the logical starting point for discussion about that issue, rather than starting when the sensationalist news coverage began, coincidental with that coverage being the starting point for Cissna's 2012 campaign. Instead, it's effectively buried in the depths of the talk page as if it were a footnote.

Like I said upfront, my familiarity and association with this subject is borderline COI. I'd just as soon have stayed out of it. Lest anyone interpret this as an attack, I just wish to state that both Sharon and Sid were very gracious in conversation when she consented to a photo. I think the main reason we had a good conversation was that I was able to keep her from talking about the TSA the whole time.RadioKAOS (talk) 00:16, 6 September 2012 (UTC)