User talk:2003:EB:4F14:8000:CD44:A095:7F87:156E

Bing Crosby
Let's do this. We create a separate section for "Going My Own Way" and the controversy. For contemporary readers, it may be the most interesting section of the article. In the next 3 days, you create a section using quotes (No commentary) from reliable sources countering the book by Gary. I will do the same supporting Gary (using only quotes from reliable sources). We can edit down from there.

Star magazine has online, "dirty, sexy, funny" and describes itself as "celebrity news, gossip, photos". Wikipedia: Reliable Sources requires sources have a reputation for fact checking. Tabloids have no such reputation. The National Enquirer, Star and The Sun are known for sensationalism, not accuracy. The Enquirer, the most popular, was so often misused and inaccurate that it is a Wikipedia "deprecated source."

You have reinserted, "All of Gary's immediate siblings disputed the abuse claims." I don't see a quotation that will support this. However, this quote, "Phillip’s twin, Dennis, professes little interest in the family history. He calls the book “Gary’s business.” While Dennis doesn’t deny Gary’s version, he explains, “Gary has a lot of anger.” Baby brother Lindsay, 45, sides with Gary. “I’m glad he did it,” says Lindsay. “I hope it clears up a lot of the old lies and rumors.” Lindsay’s endorsement is surprising: By most accounts, he was Bing’s favorite of the four." https://www.grunge.com/215525/the-tragic-real-life-story-of-bing-crosby/ This has been reprinted in several articles including People Magazine. You need to locate a quote from a reliable source that supports your assertion. This contradicts it. Eudemis (talk) 21:45, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, now look - "People" magazine is also a tabloid that pushes on sensationalism. The whole damn section is filled with sources from there. Quite on the contrary, Jo Maxted from "Star" is not trying to push any kind of sensationalism at all. We should also consider the time this was published, 1983. "Star" magazine today is something quite different from "Star" magazine in 1983. Also, to clarify, the claims that are disputed are not the claims of corporal punishment - nobody denies that. The claims that are disputed are the claims of abuse. Alright, I'm going to alter my version a bit and add more sources to support it. I'll post ot on this talk page first. Please post your version here, too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:EB:4F17:1600:CD44:A095:7F87:156E (talk) 13:49, 26 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I agree. We can disqualify People and Star as unreliable sources. I think that might improve the article.Eudemis (talk) 16:30, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

2003:EB:4F17:1600:CD44:A095:7F87:156E|2003:EB:4F17:1600:CD44:A095:7F87:156E (talk) Good, thank you so much for being there to collaborate on this! :) I put a draft of *my* new version below, designed for a separate section. After you'll have posted your version, we may discuss what we might use and how we could put our versions together, OK?

6 years after Bing Crosby's death, his eldest son, Gary, wrote a memoir, Going My Own Way (1983) in which he depicted his father as cruel, cold, remote, and physically and psychologically abusive:

"We had to keep a close watch on our actions. [...] When one of us left a sneaker or pair of underpants lying around, he had to tie the offending object on a string and wear it around his neck until he went off to bed that night. Dad called it 'the Crosby lavalier'. At the time the humor of the name escaped me.[...]

'Satchel Ass' or 'Bucket Butt' or 'My Fat-assed Kid'. That's how he introduced me to his cronies when he dragged me along to the studio or racetrack. [...]

By the time I was ten or eleven he had stepped up his campaign by adding lickings to the regimen. Each Tuesday afternoon he weighed me in, and if the scale read more than it should have, he ordered me into his office and had me drop my trousers. [...]

I dropped my pants, pulled down my undershorts and bent over. Then he went at it with the belt dotted with metal studs he kept reserved for the occasion. Quite dispassionately, without the least display of emotion or loss of self-control, he whacked away until he drew the first drop of blood, and then he stopped. It normally took between twelve and fifteen strokes. As they came down I counted them off one by one and hoped I would bleed early. [...]

When I saw Going My Way I was as moved as they were by the character he played. Father O'Malley handled that gang of young hooligans in his parish with such kindness and wisdom that I thought he was wonderful too. Instead of coming down hard on the kids and withdrawing his affection, he forgave them their misdeeds, took them to the ball game and picture show, taught them how to sing. By the last reel, the sheer persistence of his goodness had transformed even the worst of them into solid citizens. Then the lights came on and the movie was over. All the way back to the house I thought about the difference between the person up there on the screen and the one I knew at home."

Aside of the abuse claims, "Going My Own Way" is written primarily as a self-critique in which Gary Crosby repeatedly criticizes himself for straight out "fighting" his father out of principle and not recognizing any attempts of reconciliation and support made by Bing Crosby. In a conclusive statement, Gary himself stated:

"If he did make a mistake in raising us, he couldn't really be blamed for that either. The mistake wasn’t intended. The old man believed what he believed, and he thought he was doing right. He wasn't any tougher than a lot of fathers of his generation. And a lot of kids can handle that kind of upbringing without any difficulty. It was too bad that my brothers and I didn’t buy it and turn out the way he wanted. That would have made it very comfortable for everyone. But, whatever the reasons, we didn't. Linny and the twins clammed up like a shell. I bulled my neck and fought him tooth and nail all the way down the line. To my own destruction. The discipline just didn't work with us."

While acknowledging that corporal punishments took place, there were reports of all of Gary's immediate siblings distancing themselves from the abuse claims, either in public or in private. Phillip Crosby was especially vociferous about it. In a 1999 interview, he said:

"Gary was being interviewed on television and I couldn't believe my ears - he was trying to build a case for child abuse. My parents were strict, but they weren't overstrict. My dad was not the monster my lying brother said he was; he was strict, but my father never beat us black and blue, and my brother Gary was a vicious, no-good liar for saying so. I have nothing but fond memories of Dad, going to studios with him, family vacations at our cabin in Idaho, boating and fishing with him. To my dying day, I'll hate Gary for dragging Dad's name through the mud. He wrote Going My Own Way out of greed. He wanted to make money and knew that humiliating our father and blackening his name was the only way he could do it. He knew it would generate a lot of publicity. That was the only way he could get his ugly, no-talent face on television and in the newspapers. My dad was my hero. I loved him very much. He loved all of us too, including Gary. He was a great father."

In another interview, Phillip stated:

"I just don't see there was any way you could have asked for a better father. It's funny, all that crap that Gary said about getting wacked by Dad. Our mother was the one who did the disciplining. [Dad didn't want to address our bad behaviour after a] hard day's work or a bad day at the golf course, though he did not have many of those, and I think Mom just thought, well, she knew that was her job. She was strict as hell. One strap she had was a Western belt. Gary said it had studs a quarter of an inch out and surrounded by silver but I think it was more they were shaped like diamonds and pressed into the leather so it was smooth, very smooth, and just a couple of whacks and that was it. She used the strap on all four of us and there was never one time she used it we didn't deserve it."

There are contradicting reports about Dennis and Lindsay publicly supporting/being indifferent towards Gary's book or distancing themselves from the abuse claims upon its release.

Bing Crosby's daughter Mary Crosby stated multiple times in a 2014 interview conducted for a PBS documentary that Gary Crosby told her the publishers had encouraged him to exaggerate his claims and he had written the book just for money. She also repeated this statement in a further 2019 and a 2020 interview.

In a 1959 interview with Joe Hyams, Bing Crosby himself decided to openly discuss his parenting and his first four children:

"I guess I didn't do very well bringing my boys up. I think I failed them by giving them too much work and discipline, too much money and too little time and attention. But I did my best and so did their mother. [...] I used to have mass whippings, not very often, but I kept a big leather belt hung on a hook upstairs as a sort of symbol. It got so I just had to start for the belt and everything would quiet down. There were times I couldn't tell whether I was Captain Bligh in a Hawaiian sport shirt or the cream-puff of the world. Dixie used to tell me that I was too lax, that I wasn't strict enough, that I forgot our boys' transgressions too soon. She used to reproach me with, 'You punish them, then 10 minutes later you're taking them to a movie. That's bad. You should let the memory of their punishment linger so they'll remember it.' Maybe she was right. But I cut a few capers and raised plenty of cain myself when I was young and it made me feel like a heel to be bawling them out all the time and the endless pleading, the coaxing and arguing grew tiresome. I've had so many heart-to-heart talks with Gary I'm embarrassed when I say, 'sit down, Gary. I want to have a few words with you.' I think maybe I did too much talking while they did too little. It seems that maybe we got out of the habit of communicating. You've got to get kids started talking to you and keep them at it. I never had much success talking with mine."

To these statements, Bing's son Lindsay reacted:

"I don’t know how our dad could feel he’s failed us as a father. Reading that he had said that in an interview really shook me up. I only hope someday that I can give my son a tenth of what Dad has given us. And that I can rate any part of the admiration we’ve always felt for him. That’s why it hurt so much to see him knocking himself in print. Taking himself apart and saying he punished us too much, that he was too strict with us, that he made us work too hard, that he spent too little time with us. That really shook me up."

Gary Crosby's adopted son, Steven Crosby, said in a 2003 interview:

"In the early years, I think, like any family you are going to butt heads with your mom, your dad and your brothers and sisters. I think there was some father-son stuff that everyone has. The book was I think an attempt of my dad to come to grips with some things in his life."

The author of the most recent biography on Bing Crosby, Gary Giddins, claims that Gary Crosby's memoir is not reliable on many instances and cannot be trusted on the abuse stories. He also reported about his author interview with Gary Crosby during which Gary explained that he "had been drinking through the 1980s and could not be certain of dates or of whole events described in his book" and that his co-author Ross Firestone wrote those passages by himself.

In a 1972 interview, Gary Crosby had painted a very different image of his father from what is content of his 1983 book:

"We worshipped him. What he thought was everything. Of course, he was away a lot on location. Sometimes we didn’t see him for months. But when he was home, it was like my whole world was there. [...] He was tremendously sensitive and he cared deeply. He just had a rough time showing it."