Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/George W. Bush pretzel incident


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. It seems to me that those who argue that this article fails WP:NOTNEWS and WP:109PAPERS have a better argument in this case, though DGG does have a valid point in saying "Which events then are appropriate for separate articles? I think we need to return to the basic principle that we are writing an encyclopedia, not a collection of fragments, and therefore we shouldn't write in a fragmentary manner. Therefore, we should be relatively limited here, including only those that are known very widely as separate events." Overall, I felt that these arguments were stronger than the keep arguments, which were mainly that the article met the general notability guideline, and that was enough for inclusion. NW ( Talk ) 20:47, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

George W. Bush pretzel incident

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

A clear violation of WP:NOTNEWS and WP:UNDUE. Excessive coverage of a trivial, but embarrassing, incident that happened to a living person is in violation of the spirit of WP:BLP. Yes, it was reported in newspapers at the time, but there is no evidence of any long-term notability. If this article continues to remain, it opens the door for a million different "incident" articles that blow aspects of someone's life way out of proportion. *** Crotalus *** 16:02, 16 September 2009 (UTC)


 * delete per nom. Make it a blurb under Bush. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 16:09, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete - Not really an event notable enough to have an article of its own. Jeffrey Mall (talk • contribs) - 16:36, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge with the article on dubya. Notable incident, but doesn't deserve its own article as much as say, the Jimmy Carter Rabbit incident, or whatever thats called. Umbralcorax (talk) 17:11, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Nobody could argue that this has "historical notability" (see WP:NOT) - it's trivia, not even worth a mention in the main article. JohnCD (talk) 17:38, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. Many people, myself included, believe that this incident was a stroke, and that the excuse of choking on a pretzel was a cover-up. Does this count as a conspiracy cover-up? Does this count as very serious medical issue that folks really don't want to deal with? photographs and description of his portable defibrilator he wore,  some questions from dailyKOS, similar questions. After watching his performance during the debates with Ann Richards for governor of TX, his performance was darn good. But his later debates and speechs show a steady decline in cognitive ability and speech.  Tangurena (talk) 17:46, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * What you just posted here is original research. Your beliefs about the pretzel incident or about Bush in general are not relevant here, and political blogs are not reliable sources. For what it's worth, I voted the straight Democratic ticket in every election from 2004 onward. *** Crotalus *** 19:10, 16 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep or merge Clearly notable, the 7 good references already in the article demonstrate that, in addition to the many hits it gets in google. Coverage in reliable secondary sources is how we judge notability, and this recieved a lot of coverage.--Patton123 (talk) 17:50, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per reasons above. — Mike : tlk  18:01, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per non-notable, not-news, and it's trivia. Paranormal Skeptic (talk) 18:36, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. No hope for this; this is Wikipedia, not Americanpoliticsipedia.— S Marshall   Talk / Cont  19:30, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Google news archive shows continuing coverage of this incident of loss of consciousness by a U.S president in the White House, with 4,400 news hits. The coverage did not stop right up to the present, and it was considered an important incident in his presidency, even by writers in the international press in 2009, also, and m randomly selected from many. Edison (talk) 21:19, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. This "news" is so old that I don't remember it. Yoninah (talk) 21:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * To the deleters: Why shouldn't we have an article on this? We have plenty of sources to make a well referenced article.--Patton123 (talk) 22:29, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Think about the mountain of material that has been and will be written about George W. Bush. This event will occupy a very small fraction of that mountain. To have a separate article about it seems to violate WP:UNDUE (I wouldn't mind a few lines in the main article).  JUJUTACULAR  00:12, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm leaning towards "delete" on this one myself, but this is a misinterpretation of WP:UNDUE, which discusses the amount of weight an ancillary topic should be given in a main article, not the appropriateness of having articles devoted solely to ancillary topics: "Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention overall as the majority view. Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views". cab (talk) 05:37, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - as to "Why shouldn't we have an article on this?", see WP:NOHARM. In reply to the claims of lots of news hits, there is a guideline or essay somewhere, but I can't find it, which explains that a trivial matter can catch the attention of the press but the mere number of press-cuttings does not necessarily make it notable, and I think that applies here. JohnCD (talk) 10:05, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Well yeah, I agree with what you're saying (re: WP:NOHARM and WP:NOTNEWS), but I just don't see how WP:UNDUE comes into the picture --- WP:UNDUE can be an argument against a merge, but it's not really an argument for either keeping or deleting an article. cab (talk) 11:53, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Please read your own link. That says it's a bad argument if it isn't sourced. This is perfectly cited with a multitude of reliable secondary sources. Also what wikipedia is not basically says don't make ana article about someone for winning the village lottery, this is a famous event.--Patton123 (talk) 17:07, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * "Famous" is not the same as "historically notable". JohnCD (talk) 19:50, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The fact that is mentioned in so many newspapers makes it notable. There is no policy that contrdicts that.--Patton123 (talk) 15:55, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:109PAPERS. JohnCD (talk) 10:37, 19 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete No encyclopaedic value. If we have an article on every time some famous chocks on a pretzel or stumbles, it will be of too much space and little values New seeker (talk) 14:26, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Even at the time that it happened, this was "presidential trivia", in the same category as Gerald Ford falling down a set of stairs, or Jimmy Carter having hemorrhoids, or Bill Clinton's extended guffawing at a press conference with Boris Yeltsin. Worth a mention somewhere, but not its own article.  Mandsford (talk) 16:36, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If it's worth a mention somewhere why are you saying it delete it and not merge it?--Patton123 (talk) 17:08, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll support merging it to wherever you want to merge it. Mandsford (talk) 19:06, 17 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep or merge as argued by Patton123. Autarch (talk) 17:06, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep The 'keep' side may say, it is embarrassing, therefore it is notable, and the delete side may say, it is embarrassing, therefore it is trivial. These are both mistakes. The nature of the incident does not affect its notability in these ways. The extensive coverage of a US president, does. 'Pretzel''s See Also section includes, correctly, imo, Jimmy Carter rabbit incident and George H.W. Bush vomiting incident. I will add also Shoe throwing incident
 * Undue weight is the Living Persons Protectors' last line of defense; I have seen it many times, and I have come to despise it and those who use it. It has absolutely nothing to do the inclusion within WP of articles about minor events in the lives of living persons. Read it, and you will see; it is concerned with the viewpoints of minorities within articles on larger subjects. "Neutrality requires that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Now an important qualification: In general, articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views; generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all." Is anyone here of the opinion that George W. Bush did not say he choked on a pretzel? Well, then. Anarchangel (talk) 00:59, 18 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Slightly embarrassing, but not a trivial event. The event is also frequently a touchstone for humor and other references in popular culture, which shows its enduring notability.  E.g., a joke in a liberal column in SMU student paper this week about the Bush library ("Pretzels and cocaine will be flowing freely in the visitor center for all to enjoy."), a conservative blog today bemoaning the lack of MSM coverage of ACORN . --Milowent (talk) 19:56, 18 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete Minor trival event that does not even warrant a mention in the main article on President Bush. Mathieas (talk) 20:23, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, it should be at least linked then! (It is mentioned in Choking). The shoe incident isn't in there either. .--Milowent (talk) 20:44, 18 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Prior nominations:  This article is 2.5 years old -- Hey! I see it has been nominated for deletion twice already under a related name see: Articles_for_deletion/2002_George_W._Bush_pretzel_incident_(2nd_nomination) (July, 2007 nomination, result was "no consensus") and Articles for deletion/George W. Bush's pretzel (March 18, 2007 nomination, result was KEEP). Can someone who knows how add the infobox to the top for the prior AFDs?--Milowent (talk) 20:44, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Trivia Nick-D (talk) 09:06, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete It's trivia, but there is an astonishingly large number of links, probably due to the relative recentness of the article. (Of course, there are 5.5 million hits for "Barack Obama" fly, which was deleted at Articles for deletion/Barack Obama fly swatting incident.) Conspiracy theorists aside, this is not a major incident in Bush's presidency.  Horologium  (talk) 15:42, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete and salt (pun intended). I had never even heard of this?  Will there be an article on John Adams nude swimming incident, Abraham Lincoln sleeping with other men incident, and the ever popular John F. Kennedy sleeping with other women incidents?  All of these "incidents" were written about a century+ later (in two cases) ... I doubt we will be seeing any books/articles on "Bush chokes on pretzel" in 2100 (perhaps regionally in Texas, but I will figure likely not in the rest of the world).  I know an argument to avoid in deletion debates is "other stuff exists" ... but can I argue "other stuff doesn't exist"?  Just in case, I will argue delete per WP:NOT. LonelyBeacon (talk) 20:30, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * No offense, but "I've never heard of it" is not a reason for deletion. Umbralcorax (talk) 20:41, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a good thing I included a comment, and then some reasoning ... because just because it happened to someone famous isn't a good reason to keep it. By this reasoning, virtually anything that happens to an American president would qualify for a separate article ... Ronald Reagan stops at a McDonalds incident, Michael Dukakis riding in a tank incident, Howard Dean yelling YEEAAH! incident, Gerald Ford tripping down the stairs of Air Force One incidents, Ronald Reagan threatens to nuke the USSR on radio incident ... the list goes on ... these incidents all got temporary coverage in major media ... some of these events may have actually had electoral impact .. and in a few cases live on in the collective unconsciousness of the 40 and over crowd.  They still are footnotes to history, not the stuff of entire encyclopedia articles. LonelyBeacon (talk) 02:19, 20 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete - the presence of sources allow the creation of a page but don't mean that we have to have one. In this case, we have a trivial incident with no significant consequences. Mention of the incident can be added to the main article if the editors there consider that this is merited. TerriersFan (talk) 20:54, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Using my argument from Articles for deletion/George H.W. Bush vomiting incident, our actual rules are not of much assistance. As Terriers Fan says, a separate article is certainly justified according the the GNG rules; but, as the WP:N rules say, a separate article is not required for everything justified there.. Not News doesn't apply--very little a president does in public or private will actually qualify for not news, as it will all find its way into history books and biographies, and it all will thus have historical notability. We could technically justify in this manner at least one article for essentially every working day for the executive of each major country.   Which events then are appropriate for separate articles?  I think we need to return to the basic principle  that we are writing an encyclopedia, not a collection of fragments, and therefore  we shouldn't write in a fragmentary manner.  Therefore, we should be relatively limited here, including only those that are known very widely as separate events.  I do not think this event has been shown to be such,  --certainly not on an international basis, in  contrast with the  George H.W. Bush vomiting incident which has much more widespread  coverage, & much more actual importance on world opinion.  I'm not sure about the Jimmy Carter rabbit incident, whjch  would be justified if at all by its role in the re-election campaign.    DGG ( talk ) 22:54, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep The way I see it, this is notable due to the fact that it may be interpreted as a particularly bad cover-up story. Not necessarily spawned out of any major necessity, but nonetheless interesting. --Martinor (talk) 05:57, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep First for formal reasons, there have been 2 nomination and the reason for another nomination is unclear. Second the incident was widely reported in foreign media, including Germany. 83.254.210.47 (talk) 09:11, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Utterly trivial. Arguments that it is notable because it might be a bad coverup seem to misunderstand the WP meaning of notability.  Phiwum (talk) 00:31, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete; I believe this is exactly the kind of article WP:NOTNEWS perfectly encapsulates. Yes there are plenty of sources, but that's not the only consideration here. Martin Raybourne (talk) 19:45, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Very notable incident that was covered very substantially in reliable independent sources and remains significant and relevant in popular culture where it is has been discussed and satirized or years. There is no possible way the encyclopedia is improve by deleting it. A merge, maybe. But why? Need I remind everyone that every Olympic athlete and professional athlete is considered inherently notable? This is so far and away more important, interesting and informative than those articles that it's not even in the same galaxy for comparison. Not every article has to be on an "important" and "serious" subject. They just have to be on notable subjects which this clearly is. ChildofMidnight (talk) 21:24, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - With due respect, that does not follow. U.S. Presidents, like Olympic athletes are inherently notable and worthy of an article.  Should the individual accomplishments of Olympic athletes be worthy of an article? .... that is, should there be Usain Bolt wins the Olympic 100 meters, Sergei Bubka pole vaults 20 feet, Jesse Owens wins 4 Olympic gold medals?  The people are certainly notable ... no question ... but not every event of their lives, no matter the coverage is notable .... because each of those athletic events would certainly meet the needed coverage for an article .... but we don't write them because while the person is notable, they are smaller in the context of the entire career.  I would easily argue that Jesse Owens' four gold medals in 1936 has much greater coverage and historic resonance than Mr. Bush's illness .... yet it is only part of the articles on Mr. Owens and the 1936 Summer Olympics. LonelyBeacon (talk) 23:29, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Those bits don't need articles because they are already covered and exactly what the articles coverign those subjects are about. But certainly it would be wacko to delete content related to Jesse Owens winning 4 Olympic medals. If it were covered in a stand-alonse article (instead of the biography) we would definitely need to keep it. And it is just as silly to delete this very notable incident since it's not covered elsewhere. If you find a good merge target that's worth discussing, but deleting notable feats and events damages the encyclopedia. ChildofMidnight (talk) 16:20, 22 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep if it had happened to a celebrity and made headlines, it would fail WP:NOTNEWS. As it happened to the US President, it transcends into history Vartanza (talk) 22:11, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per DGG. I'm impressed with David's reasoning in this and the parallel AfD on the Bush 41 barfing incident. Although they might seem on the surface to be similar kinds of incidents, throwing up on the Japanese Prime Minister in 1992 created an international and widely reported diplomatic incident and therefore should be kept (and I voted to keep there).  But this pretzel incident was in private, did not have any serious repercussions and is therefore basically a footnote for Bush 43. Even if they both had the same news coverage, this one isn't sufficiently notable to have a separate article. Adding a mention to the main article on dubya would be sufficient, IMO. Note that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution apparently referred to it as "... a mere hiccup." If sufficient credible and reliable sources arise that make this significantly more notable and verifiable (ie - a stroke, TIA, or something else) than it seems now, then write a new article. But for now, delete per the thrust of the various delete arguments. We don't do WP:OR. — Becksguy (talk) 00:50, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete per WP:NOTNEWS. This is so beneath the definition of notable or news that it's absurd. We are writing an encyclopedia here, not amassing a journal of every temporal time slice that's ever been documented. There is still the wider web for that.  The only reason this could possibly be notable is if a significant line of notable thought emerges that this was a coverup for something else, which is credible given what seem to be unanswered questions, but so far as I know pure speculation.  (In that event, we would re-create an article with the new information, not keep this one until some imagined conspiracy theory congeals.)  Choking on one's food while watching a game is simply not notable enough to deserve its own encyclopedia article, no matter who does it and no matter how many snarky hacks decide to recall the incident as if it were meaningful.  The DeeDee Meyers quote is hilarious but "it's funny" isn't reason for an article.  It does give some perspective though.  Would this be an article if it were Prince Charles pretzel incident?  How about Britney Spears pretzel incident?  Achmadinejad pretzel incident?  What about George Washington pretzel incident?  Do I understand the justification to be that he is the president and it happened to him and people wrote about it and so it deserves an article?  Nnnno.  One of the most offensive arguments at Wikipedia is "If I can find something that just might squeak by as WP:RS—I get to make an article!" which is akin to "It's a meme! Jay Leno just quipped about it! Put it in an article!"  This is topped only by the martyr-ish "I read it in a blog, sourced to an Op/Ed, so I'm adding it to/making an article even though I know it'll get deleted/AfDed, because now it's forever linked to the subject at Wikipedia through the article history/talk page archive".  Increasingly for the last twenty or thirty years, people write about everything the president does, not because it's informing the public about what they need to know to carry out their own civic responsibilities in a democracy but because they have to fill time or come up with a scoop or just want to poke until they can deflate somebody; most of this does not deserve its own encyclopedia article.  As to the other incidents to which it is compared, it seems the Jimmy Carter rabbit incident happened during a private moment, similar to the pretzel incident but without the bodily trauma or conspiracy theory, and would be notable only insofar as it would illustrate how the press distorts a story to fit their own larger storyline [Strong Delete or expansion for context]; the George H.W. Bush vomiting incident is somewhat similar although perhaps more notable because it happened in an international forum (again, people vomit when they have a virus; they generally don't vomit at the dinner table or on heads of state, but then, most other people are free to decline a dinner invitation when they're ill) [Weak Delete]; and the Shoe-throwing incident is notable as Bush was in that room to deliver a speech to the press and the thrower was a member of the press who went to jail for the incident—which was intended and not merely inferred to be representative, Bush brought a war and poorly-run military occupation upon the country and expected them to throw flowers, but instead they threw shoes [Strong Keep].  This has nothing to do with whether it's embarrassing, and I am not being partisan here.  I have seen people want to delete mentions of legislation passed by a president.  There are guidelines on limiting the chartings included in a musical artist discography.  We need to maintain certain thresholds for what an encyclopedia shines a spotlight on by giving something its own article, and whether there are two reliable sources or two hundred, this article is neither encyclopedically notable nor useful.  Abrazame (talk) 03:11, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * As to the George Washington pretzel incident, it is a matter of unverifiable and unreliable record that he splintered his dentures while trying to eat a pretzel in 1793. Mandsford (talk) 14:12, 22 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Ugh. Delete.  I compare this (or I guess, contrast it) to George H.W. Bush vomiting incident (which I see is at AfD), an eminently notable incident with enough coverage to demand that it be spun out from the main article and enough breadth of coverage to do so without endangering our POV on the subject.  Not so this particular incident. Protonk (talk) 17:48, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Undoubtedly trivia. Of course noteworthy people such as presidents are going to get coverage on many incidents, but it's not the job of an encyclopedia to document every possible incident that's been covered by the media. Textbook example of WP:NOT#NEWS. Spellcast (talk) 18:37, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per DGG - not every presidential incident or footnote is worthy of a separate article, but the long-term effects are a good standard. Compare that to Articles for deletion/George H.W. Bush vomiting incident, for which I have argued is notable. Bearian (talk) 19:44, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, satisfies WP:NOTE. Topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. Also, it is an interesting and noteworthy example and should be expanded to include an analysis and commentary from secondary sources on the White House Medical Unit in action responding to a notable medical patient. Cirt (talk) 14:00, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.