Talk:Hillary Clinton

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new design

To meet the standards of Wikipedia, I have created the following three subpages: 1) Political Views of Hillary Clinton, 2) Controversies surrounding Hillary Clinton, 3) Cultural Matters of Hillary Clinton. Please remember to improve these subpages when you improve the main article. Thank you. -Luketh. luketh 02:35, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again Luke. Even though I was content with the one big article, I agree that a consensus had formed to split subarticles out, and I agree that you picked the right three to break out. However, I have adjusted the subarticle titles to Political views of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Controversies surrounding Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Cultural matters related to Hillary Rodham Clinton. That's because the name used in the subarticles should match the main article name (HRC not HC), and because WP article title conventions use lower case unless proper nouns are involved. Wasted Time R 03:22, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Wasted. Good to see you. Yes, you're right that HRC is better than HC for the subarticle titles. luketh 03:36, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

controversies

1/2 this article is about controversies. this is quickly reaching the point where it should be spun off into a daughter article with a reasonable summary. that way the controversies can be more fully explored without completely dominating what is supposed to be a basic biography. see e.g. bill frist, george w. bush, al gore, & john kerry for precedents. comments? Derex 02:18, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You exaggerate. I've just done a word count. The whole article is 11,877 words, of which 2,667 in Controversies, which is 22%. Another 1,050 words are in Cultural Matters, or 9%. 2,035 words or 17% are in the Political Views section, which is generally pro-Hillary fluff. The rest, slightly over half, is pretty straight biographical material.

As for splitting out the controversies, most of them don't need additional exploration. It's generally, somebody accused Hillary of something, the proper authorities investigated, Hillary was cleared. What more to say? Wasted Time R 03:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

umm, i didn't mean a literal word count. where i'm from, that's a figure of speech meaning a hell of a lot. sorry, didn't mean to be misleading (as anyone can just look at the page). let me explain my position a bit more. as to whether they need exploration, it looks to me like they're growing rapidly. last i looked at this article a while back, it didn't have near this much stuff. to me, it looks sort of like the standard scandal-mongering swampage of a political article is well under way here. one (undesirable) way of handling that is to remove extra details as they are added. another is to move it to a daughter article to handle the pressure.

at any rate, i see an awful lot of really petty 'scandals' included that are just plain silly in the main biography -- 4 paragraphs on the word "plantation", a complaint by bill o'reilly about funeral attendance, a poor joke, 4 paragraphs on using a ghostwriter (like that's unusual)? what's the standard for inclusion? there are _endless_ such trivialities that can be included. i don't think that means there's no place for them in wikipedia, documenting them help illustrate the political culture of the times. but, as you say, most of them end up nowhere. so, why devote 1/5 of a biography that's pretty much tangential to her notability?

and i guarantee you it will grow, if my experience on other political pages is any indicator, see e.g. Bill Frist medical school experiments controversy which I successfully excised from the main article with a reasonable summary, after it started swamping it. see also, John Kerry military service controversy which i helped spin off after it was in danger of sinking John Kerry. both the main articles and the controversy discussions are much the better for it. frankly, i feel the same way about discussion of her hairstyles & sports teams -- simply inappropriate for a main biography encyclopedia entry. anyways, that's a hell of a long answer i just wrote, i'll leave it with you more regular editors of the page for the time being. Derex 03:49, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see what you're saying, but I don't think these sections are in any danger of sinking the Hillary article. There's tons of straight stuff about her career and her politics before you even get to them. Indeed the "design" of the page is to permit a straight exposition about her life while segregating the controversies till later. I agree the 'plantation' remark has gotten too much coverage; once it simmers down I plan to trim that section. But like it or not, she's a controversy magnet, her career as it is sitting on top of a couple of major fault lines of American culture and politics. They're a part of the Hillary story, as much as anything else in the page. I would hate to ghettoize them in a separate article. Wasted Time R 05:24, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

not disagreeing in general, just responding to your last line. in none of the cases i mentioned are the controversies ghettoized; they are still summarized at reasonable length in the article. it's just that one to two sentences on each of these 'scandals' is probably sufficient for the reader to understand that she is, as you say, a controversy magnet. the interested reader can then find more detail elsewhere. i can't think of any other article about a significant politician, except maybe Karl Rove (which should be changed), that has so much 'controversy' in the main bio _including_ Bill Clinton. even Iran-Contra, a constitutional crisis, is handled in a couple sentences in the Reagan article, with a summary and a link. less space is even devoted to Nixon controversies in the main bio. again, i'll respect the call of the present editors. but, i don't think 'ghettoize' is a fair characterization of the way most articles handle even large scandals around politicians, much less picayune criticisms by pundits. Derex 16:58, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the Bill Clinton, Reagan, and Nixon examples you point to are handled correctly by separate articles. I just don't think any of the controversies/scandals in the Hillary article rise to that level; partly that's because she was a First Lady, not a President, and thus there was a limit to how much trouble she could land in. Now if she gets herself into some major, significant ethical brouhaha as Senator, that would be different, and could well warrant a separate article. But so far, that hasn't happened. Wasted Time R 17:48, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding 'plantation', I've trimmed it down now. I removed the Laura Bush comment against and the Barack Obama comment for, as neither was really needed. Wasted Time R 13:09, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. The Obama comment was needed to balance the previous statements about Clinton's comment being condemned with one showing that many defended her comments, which doesn't always happen when politicians make controversial comments. You could shorten it by taking out the quote and just saying that black Democrats, including Obama, defended Clinton's comments. I don't really think this section needs to be shortened at all. If anything does need shortening, it's probably the section about Ghostwriters. -Maximusveritas 18:51, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Obama comment isn't especially relevant, since he's a Senator not a House member. Indeed Hillary is a Senator as well — what does she know about what it's like to be in the House? That's why this whole thing is silly to begin with ... in a couple of years no one will remember it ... so the less space devoted to it here, the better. Wasted Time R 19:54, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Obama is relevant as a prominent black politician who defended Clinton's statements. You don't have to be in the House to comment on it or know what's going on. It provides balance in showing that many people defended and even applauded her comments. Leaving it out presents a one-sided view of the reaction to her comments, so I think it should be put back in (albeit, a condensed version of it). Meanwhile, I'll condense the first paragraph of the section. - Maximusveritas 20:19, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

just to be obnoxiously repetitious, none of it belongs here at all. it's not a long-run notable event. i missed the news that week, and didn't even hear about it till here -- and i'm a news/blog junkie. Derex 20:26, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, at least by the standards of what qualifies as a controversy so far, I think this should be on the page. Wikipedia is always going to skew toward more recent events. Time will eventually take care of that as we gain a better historical perspective on these events, but I don't think we should rush that process prematurely. As far as the controversies section in general, I do agree that it is way out of proportion to other articles on political figures. I'm not sure what the general consensus is for dealing with this, but something should be done. - Maximusveritas 20:50, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are right that this article is unlike those of other political figures. Not only is there the separate Controversies section with a number of entries, there is also a separate Political Views section, where a number of entries present HRC's views and philosophies at some length. The architect of all this was LukeTH, who felt strongly that isolating both views and controversies away from the bio/historical mainline would benefit readers and increase fairness. And at the time, LukeTH was praised by several admins for his work in doing this. Even though I partially argued against it at the time, I am kind of loathe to tear this structure down now. It's also worth nothing that almost every time we've eliminated one of the Controversies entries, someone else has come along and re-introduced the issue, invariably with inferior citing and npov compared to what is here now. Wasted Time R 14:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ok. that's interesting to know; it did look like someone had taken a much-needed restructuring axe to this since i had last looked. i agree luketh made an improvement. ... regarding praise from admins, i think it's important to note that being an admin doesn't make your opinion about content special. i imagine i've been here (and in good standing) longer than the majority of admins, and mine's not special either. ... btw, your last line goes to my point about pressure. Derex 14:59, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If someone has an idea for a positive restructuring, we should definitely consider it. The Controversies section is longer now than at any other point in the article's history. Most other articles, for example George W. Bush, place controversial issues on separate pages (if they are important enough to be covered at all.) I think it's time to take an axe to the structure and get our coverage out of the gutter. While I do think the article has generally been maintained very nicely by WastedTime, the original article, which was a compromise with editors who were interested in covering baseless attacks on Clinton, should not be set in stone. Now that the pro-sliming editors are gone, we should consider covering Clinton with the same fairness accorded by Wikipedia editors to other political figures of her stature. I would be strongly in support of any restructuring attempt by Derex to improve this article. luketh 02:01, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Extraneous material

I shortened the section on carpetbag issue because the extra verbiage said nothing. I deleted the section about other elections because it is misleading, and irrelevant. This is not the place to analyze state politics --there already are articles on Shumer and D'Amato. And it's based on original research that's a no-no Rjensen 16:46, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On carpetbagging, the text you omitted did say something — it made clear that she had never done anything in the state before, and when and where she moved to the state, and gave detail on the voters' reaction to the issue. This is highly relevant to this particular campaign, and not to NY State politics in general. Your shortening removed the most important element in the campaign, and even removed the wikilink to carpetbagger, making readers wonder what it is. I am restoring this text. Wasted Time R 17:15, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On comparing her winning margin to other margins, I commented out everything other than the Gore 2000 comparison. That one makes Hillary look bad, and so should satisfy all objectors. Wasted Time R 17:53, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The carpetbagging text is POV and false. HC was a major player in New York politics for years--in fund raising for example. I'll rework it. Rjensen 18:55, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think that extraneous material should be removed. I'm very concerned about the article becoming too long. I put this tag: on the article, expessing my concerns that the page should be shortened. SNIyer12 (talk) 17:02, 31 January 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Shortening

I think that this article should be shortened and/or new articles should be created. I'm very concerned about this article becoming too long. SNIyer12 (talk) 13:50, 31 January 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is long compared to most other Wikipedia articles, but why is this bad? There is a very clear Table of Contents for the article, so readers can easily find the sections they are interested in and ignore the rest. Splitting it out into multiple articles would not improve on the overall structure and would risk duplication of material creeping in. Wasted Time R 14:01, 31 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article should definitely be shortened. It's turning into a bunch of close-to-slanderous garbage. I vote that Controversies gets its own page. If fact, along with my vote, I'm making this change. Please don't change it back without discussion. We need to get the admins off our backs. luketh 02:13, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

President v. Former President

Read President of the United States#Life after the Presidency, first sentence. I'm Canadian and even I knew that. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 01:39, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry. That's in reference to this. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 01:40, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The difference is betwen a title and a position. Bill Clinton still has the honorary title of "President", but he is no longer the president. In this case, we can probably drop the title entirely. -Will Beback 01:58, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's no need to drop the title. Look at the other recent First Lady articles — they all say "President" in their intros and no one bats an eyelash. It's only the magic name "Clinton" that gets people turning silly. Leave it the way it should be. Wasted Time R 03:42, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we should be consistent. If the husbands of other former First Ladies get a title then this one should too. Thanks for checking that. -Will Beback 23:33, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seems pretty clear that it should be "President Clinton" per precedent from related articles. Readers can walk themselves over to his article if they're not sure whether he's out of office :) Adrian Lamo · (talk) · (mail) · 00:21, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, "Wife of"

I had already changed "is the wife of..." to "is married to..." in the opening paragraph on Jan 19, 2006, and am glad to see that there is implicit agreement to this. I feel this is important, since she is a person in her own right, and language such as "wife of" hearkens back to the days when wives were their husbands' property. Incidentally, Encyclopedia Britannica still calls her the "wife of" Bill Clinton -- you backwards closed-source encyclopedia, you! ;) --RealGrouchy 07:33, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]