Talk:Stalking horse/Archives/2013

Sir Anthony Meyer
Sir Anthony Meyer was the "stalking horse" put forward by Heseltine himself who was very serious about becoming Conservative leader. I suggest reading his biography if you have any doubts about who was who in this business. The John Major eventually won does not make Heseltine the "stalking horse" by implication.

American Indian name?
Wasn't Stalking Horse an American Indian name? I don't mean just Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull, but this one as well. DyslexicEditor 02:43, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Art Term
Stalking horse is also a term of art in financial deals.

Questionable source
The source doesn't claim that Lieberman has been accused of being a stalking horse, it directly accuses him of it.--THobern 08:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Clarity of examples and definitions
I find it hard to understand this article, except for the origin of the phrase of course. A horse trained to help a hunter "stalk" his prey makes sense. The animals focus on the horse, which does not appear threatening, while overlooking the human hunter.

Let's try an example of splitting the vote. There are two candidates for high office, A and B. Suppose that B is likely to win, but a third candidate appears. He takes votes away from B, thus aiding A (who wins).


 * ... a candidate who splits the vote of a serious contender, perhaps unwittingly, and thus benefits a third, better-positioned candidate. By this second definition, Ross Perot was a stalking horse for Bill Clinton in 1992, Ralph Nader was a stalking horse for Bush in 2000. (Slate)

I've also seen the term applied to an issue rather than to a person. Embryonic stem cell research was called a "stalking horse", with the real intent to discredit religion or to promote abortion on demand. --Uncle Ed (talk) 18:34, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

The journalistic practice of quoting anonymous sources, when in fact there are no sources, is said to be "an honorable tradition". The next sentence says "This would of course be uncommon and indeed unethical". The following sentence says, "At worst, it fills space on a dull news day", which implies that it is ethically neutral. This paragraph needs to be rewritten to resolve the confusion, either by removing the ethical references (a less desirable resolution in my opinion), or by removing the implications that it is either honorable or ethically acceptable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.193.196.133 (talk) 22:14, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Mobile Hide
Article states (in origin para), "Sometimes mobile hides are used for a similar purpose." What does this mean? What is a mobile hide?Nickrz (talk) 19:31, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Historianun

I removed "eminence grise." The term was incorrectly translated and used: "concept is the eminence grise. This means literally 'the gray figure', that is to say the figure lurking in the shadows." The correct translation is "gray eminence," which refers to a elder, eminent person who commands respect and deference due to his/her position, rank, or qualifications. It was used to describe Cardinal Richelieu during the reign of Louis XIII. It does not mean somebody who lurks in the shadows. An eminence grise may indeed employ stalking horses, but the previous usage was not correct.

Proposed merger from Stalking horse offer

 * Do not merge A stalking horse offer is a specific concept in bankrupty proceedings.  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a dictionary (cf. WP:DICT), so the fact that this concept is named a 'stalking horse' offer is not a reason to merge. --Macrakis (talk) 20:37, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal, 2013
Looks like the past merger proposal was split across articles and it faded away, so: I suggest that stalking horse offer be merged into this article. The stalking horse offer article gives only a few short sentences of definition, and eight bland examples of business deals that happened to have been described as "stalking horse offers". (Are such deals common? Are they rare? Are they frowned upon? The article does not explain.) Trimming to one or two examples, it would fit comfortably in the "bankruptcy" subsection of this article. And this article is about the situation when a figure "mounts a challenge against someone on behalf of an anonymous third party" rather than the horse, so both articles are already covering the same ground. --McGeddon (talk) 17:38, 15 April 2013 (UTC)