Talk:Strategery

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Shouldn't the SNL block at the bottom of the page be removed? Call-in talk show host, M-F 5pm E.T. at KGOV.com 800-8Enyart (talk) 22:10, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]


This article cites the Washington Post as a primary source attributing first use of the term to satirists, and not to Bush. If anyone ever wants to further research the matter, they might contact Saturday Night Live's writers of 1 January 1999 to verify that they coined the term in jest and did not in fact select if from a source that attributed it to Bush. If Bush indeed first used the term, that should be included in this article.


Findlay I'm so never-mindish about this, but are you Pointy-viewificating that damaging government property in the White House is a practical joke when making unwelcome edits to an openly editable pseudo-encylcopedia projection is classificated as vandalism? Dubious 20:41, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"Hotly debated"[edit]

I removed a phrase stating "The actual origin of the word is hotly debated". [1] In the context the phrase was used, the phrase seemed to discuss origins of the word "Bushism" which is not the topic of this article. The real problem, however, is that I reviewed dozens of Internet links found by searching "stategery" in combination with "Bush" "invented" "coined" and other terms and found no evidence of hot debate. I found evidence of one-sided attributions of the term by critics of Bush. And I found the sourcs cited in which A. A leading Washington newspaper attributed the term's origing to SNL; B. A video in which satirists can be seen using the term; C. A transcript after those events in which Bush is quoted using the term; D. Other sources explaining Bush now uses the term to describe various cabinent meetings after taking office.

What's more, the present tense suggested some ongoing debate, even further raising the author's burden of proof to find not just any debate, but on-going debate. So, I found no hot debate on record. No folklore departments at major universities studying the term. No liberal newspapers suggesting Bush first used the term. No actual citations of any use of the term before the 1/1/99 SNL satire.

I would suggest either A. finding evidence of such debate; B. mounting a personal attack against this contributor to avoid confronting the fact that no such evidence could be found; C. attending to the content of the corpus rather than to identity and ego issues related to perceptions of authors. An additional option that might work with either "A" or "C" would be to appreciate and assimilate any lesson in human relations that might arise from this experience in collaborative editing.

"B" should be an easy option because: A. Findlay enjoys community prestige and might likely get away with it; B. This contribotor intentionally acted in a manner typical of regular contributors but without any of the prestige necessary to defend such behavior; C. Community standard here often revolve around demeaning an unpopular character while defending a popular character offering a similar ad hominem rhetoric.

And to extinguish any notion of POV on this contributor's part regarding the content of the article, I think Bush should be arrested and tried for war crimes. But I still think this article should be written with accurate, neutral information about how the term "strategery" originated with Bush's critics and was used by his less informed critics in an attempt to damage him politically.

And to those who are feeling their blood boil and preparing a response of slurs and personal attacks as they read this edit summary, edit summaries are an appropriate part of editorial discussion. Carefully consider your own motivations before you reach unsupprotable conclusions about mine. In the present environment, this sort of summary is just what this collectivity needs. Dubious 21:27, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Too many words. Narcissistic.

My Edits[edit]

The term came from Saturday Night Live. There is no debate about it. It is so certain that SNL coined the term that citing the Washington Post article in the main text is unneccesary, but I left it in as a link. Since SNL coined the term, the article needed to lead with that, so I moved the discussion of the SNL sketch to the beginning of the article.

"Strategery" has nothing to do with H.W. Bush, nor does the term Bushism. If you look at the Wikipedia entry for "Bushism", it doesn't mention H.W., so I took out the reference to H.W.

Are we trying to sell tapes for Amazon? Who cares if you can buy the episode on Amazon. It's a non sequitor, it's gone.

I took out the discussion of the practical jokes by the Clinton staffers because it was also a non sequitor. The sign "office of strategery" wouldn't be, but there was no authority cited for it, so I thought the contributor might have confused it with the fact that the Bush White House refers to the "Department of Strategery". Therefore, I added that discussion to the article and provided the citation.

I took out the reference to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) for two reasons: (1) it's a stretch to cite the IMDB as a source of authority for what goes on in the Bush White House, and (2) the IMDB is an online source, yet no link was provided to support this claim.

I'm not sure that it's proper to say what Bush's critics are aware or not aware of in using the term Strategery, since it is very unlikely that all of them are unaware of the word's origin. It's likely that most of the critics are aware of the origin when they use it to ridicule him.

-- Anonymous — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.247.205.120 (talk)

I used to work with a guy who used that term a lot, and not as an ironic use. This would have been '97-'98, since I only saw him once after that. He was an old ad-agency hand, so I assumed it was industry slang. Either way, it's a nonsense word, I don't see how it's notable enough to be listed here, and giving first attribution to SNL is ludicrous. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.101.8.204 (talk) 02:58, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation[edit]

How is this word pronounced? --WhiteDragon 14:39, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]


"struh-TEEDGE-er-ee", IPA: [stɹʌˡtidʒɚri] --EmersonLowry 18:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Use as a Real Term[edit]

Since its coining, strategery has also come to be used to mean "The strategic application of strategies" and could be considered synonymous with "Meta-strategy", just as mis-underestimation (Another 'Bushism') has come to mean an "Underestimation that proves to be significantly detrimental to the one who makes it". One can underestimate something without significant harm, but mis-underestimating implies that the underestimation had disastrous results. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.212.105.219 (talk) 21:11, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can not imagine President Obama or his staff using these words. Kitfoxxe (talk) 18:17, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh BTW, the Soviet Union failed because they misunderestimated two things: The human capacity for evil and the human capacity for good. Just thought I'd mention that. Kitfoxxe (talk) 18:19, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Should be deleted[edit]

This is silly trivia, not something worthy of having an encyclopedia article on. Are we going to write articles on every goofy term that enters the language? 108.254.160.23 (talk) 16:09, 30 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe move it to the other wiki? Jimw338 (talk) 19:44, 2 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]