Talk:Jimmy Carter rabbit incident

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Inappropriate[edit]

I am putting out an RfC here on the last line of this article, and requesting a reversion or a simple deletion of the line. The line claims that the embarrassment of the rabbit incident is "synonymous" with the Carter presidency, and then cites a very short blurb from the Washington Post which is actually part of a larger piece about "media frenzies" and attacks made on Presidents in the past. The line is inappropriate first because it treats an opinion as a cited fact, and therefore breaks neutrality rules; secondly, because it fails to note the proper context of its citation (a larger piece about wild attacks in the news media). Abs7 08:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, no problem. Personally I feel the wording "portraying him as..." gives the indication that it's hardly an accepted fact that Carter was those things, merely that it's like saying "This story of the cherry tree was later seen to encapsulate George Washington's integrity" or something, it may or may not be true, but it's what the story is frequently associated with in common parlance. Sherurcij (Speaker for the Dead) 09:32, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I understand where you are coming from, I think. But I guess I'd respond in two ways. 1.) The incident itself doesn't necessarily "illustrate him [Carter] as" enfeebled, but rather the media frenzy based around the incident sought to portray him that way. But the sentence as written claims the former rather than the latter. 2.) To echo my original point, I don't believe that there is enough empirical evidence to prove that this one incident, or more accurately, the way the media portrayed the incident, became "synonymous with Carter's presidency." I believe such a statement is problematic both because it is ambiguous and because it is impossible to prove with the evidence provided, and therefore ventures into non-neutral territory. Abs7 22:15, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just to add, I'd like to suggest something along these lines as a possible compromise: "The resulting media frenzy sought to portray the perceived embarrassment of the rabbit incident as a metaphor for Carter's presidency." Abs7 22:19, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Foster[edit]

In Press Secretary Foster's 1986 book The Other Side of the Story, he recounted the story as such...

Who is Foster?

Good catch, not sure how that screwed up - should have said Powell of course :) Thanks for the help. Sherurcij (Speaker for the Dead) 02:37, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Title[edit]

I am going to move this to Jimmy Carter rabbit incident because the rabbit was in no way the possession of Jimmy. BenB4 15:08, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Applause[edit]

This is a well-made articleSpencerk 03:23, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, I'd never heard of the incident myself until I saw somebody wearing a spoof t-shirt mimicking "9/11: Never forget" slogans, with one about the world never being the same after the President was attacked by a rabbit :) Sherurcij (Speaker for the Dead) 07:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You are so funny. Extremely sexy 15:52, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

--I removed a link to the George Bush pretzel incident because it didn't seem relevant to the content of this article. (Maybe it'd be worthwhile to end the article with a link to a list of embarrassing situations for presidents, but linking to the pretzel incident specifically seems almost like a non sequitur). B.M. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.254.249.210 (talk) 04:44, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If there are similar articles for other presidents, by all means include them. Sherurcij (Speaker for the Dead) 05:03, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tired Pop Culture Fluff[edit]

Do we really need every last pop culture reference of every event in history included in wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.170.52.58 (talk) 17:58, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

All the notable ones. Binarybits (talk) 18:18, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.172.2.73 (talk) 08:02, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To an American, this may be just another worn-out pop-culture reference. As a non-American, I'd never heard of this before today despite being in my thirties, and am glad there's a reasonably reliable reference to explain what is being referred to on the XKCD 'Map Age Guide', and that I finally understand why the Animaniacs Presidents Song always summed up Carter's presidency with the line 'Jimmy Carter liked camping trips'. 194.153.21.81 (talk) 12:14, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Removed cultural references[edit]

Unfortunately, none of these demonstrate the of-touted concept of "cultural impact". Instead, what you've got is the usual handful of minor references. These don't show us the lasting impact. In our age of referential pop-culture comedy, every single newsworthy event gets lampooned somewhere. What might be useful is a sourced description of how this event influenced/was perceived by the public, but those short, random references don't help at all. They have no place in an encyclopedia. Mintrick (talk) 21:17, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to open an RfC on the matter; but otherwise we will err on the side of the "stable" version of the article that has existed for over two years. Many WP articles about historical events include a list of cultural impact/references, something like D-Day may not since there would be millions, but something like this would. Sherurcij (speaker for the dead) 21:21, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid that's not how it works. You cannot simply declare something the "stable" version and keep it perpetually. And such sections are quite commonly deleted. Take a moment and think; why are the D-Day references not important, but the ones here are? Is there a real difference? Or is it simply that the deficiencies of this kind of non-information become vastly more obvious when they are more voluminous than actual content? Mintrick (talk) 21:26, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Um...[edit]

An article like this should be a one-sentence stub of an article on the list for deletion. How long of an article does some rabbit incident in a person's life need to be in an encylopedia? GnarlyLikeWhoa (talk) 21:29, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Three things make it notable: 1) That it happened to the President of the United States. 2) That it received significant media coverage. 3) That people saw the incident, fairly or unfairly, as emblematic of Carter's presidency. YLee (talk) 22:47, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps more for the way the White House swept it under the rug than any other reason... The incident was originally caught on video, then, years later, somehow the original video ceased to exist and it was replaced by a still image that is not a picture of Carter, and is furthermore a bizarre double exposure. The whole cover-up aspect is just plain weird. Almost as weird as the cover-up of Al Franken boiling live cockroaches on SNL. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:6AE5:2510:0:0:0:46 (talk) 00:38, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Boat"[edit]

How many more times do you think we can fit the word "boat" into this sentence?

Carter had gone on a solo fishing expedition in his hometown of Plains, Georgia when the rabbit approached his boat, "hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared and making straight for the president",[1] trying desperately to enter the boat, causing Carter to flail at the swimming creature with the oars from his boat. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.239.45.4 (talk) 00:56, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pop-culture reference on xkcd[edit]

Not sure how noteworthy this is, but there is a reference to this incident in an xkcd: http://xkcd.com/204/ --MinorFixes (talk) 21:18, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Merger Proposal[edit]

{{mergeto|Presidency of Jimmy Carter|discuss=Talk:Presidency of Jimmy Carter#Merger Proposal|date=July 2012}}

I am proposing that we merge Jimmy Carter rabbit incident into Presidency of Jimmy Carter. Although the rabbit incident article has existed for a while, it is not notable per WP:EVENTS. The event did not have any long-term influence, and a couple paragraphs in the article about Carter's presidency seems more appropriate. I consider Carter's rabbit incident similiar to Dan Quayle "potatoe" incident or Gerald Ford's tripping episodes, neither of which we have articles about. Ashbrook Station (talk) 02:15, 8 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See:
However, as included in the "See also" section of this article, we have:
Perhaps encounters with rabbits, misspellings of words and tripping don't rise to the level of vomiting, accidental shootings and carrying a dog in a car rooftop dog carrier.
Note that Ashbrook Station redirected Jimmy Carter rabbit incident with this 21:25, 6 July 2012 edit, and only started this section after being reverted at 21:31, 6 July 2012. – Wbm1058 (talk) 16:40, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

what consensus?[edit]

This article was changed to a redirect by a user claiming that a consensus existed in favor of this action. Can that user show where such a consensus was reached?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hermitage (talk • contribs) 09:42, 29 May 2013

Continue this discussion at Talk:Presidency of Jimmy Carter#The rabbit incident – Wbm1058 (talk) 17:46, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The information is now elsewhere[edit]

This redirect points to a location that has no real information about the incident. The current place where the incident is described is Swamp rabbit#Carter incident. If it's going to stay this way, the redirect should be changed to point to the other location. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:02, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See thread above, for the link to current/ongoing discussion. –Quiddity (talk) 00:11, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What's the deal here?[edit]

I notice this this article is averaging 339 pageviews a day. There are a couple spikes (probably from a mention somewhere in media) but even on slow days its over 150, usually well over. So a comment and question:

  • I think this kind of puts paid to all the objections above about this not being a worthwhile page.
  • What the heck? Can anyone explain why hundreds of readers a day are accessing this page? Herostratus (talk) 13:37, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I see that it's now linked from Trump orb, an article that you created. That should give page views an extra boost! You promote it, and then ask why it's so popular? wbm1058 (talk) 13:52, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't promote it, I linked to it as an example. I have no interest in promoting it, and the 339 pageviews is over the last 90 days nor has there been a recent spike. Making up random nonsense about other editor's motives is not a good idea. Herostratus (talk) 19:19, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Herostratus: Hey, lighten up. I understand you weren't intentionally promoting it; that's just a side effect of "using it as an example". Then the next question is, "what's so special about this example?" Looking at this kind of stuff brings "clickbait" to my mind. Your "orb" article got a big spike for the first few days, but it's already retreated into the noise of the rest. It takes some time to find out whether a fresh incident will have enough "staying power" to become a "click-baitey" encyclopedic article for the long term. wbm1058 (talk) 20:58, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
OK. It's a big project. There's room for lots of stuff. Trump orb is being artificially depressed because AfD'ing it means its not indexed for Google searches (I think). Not that pageviews matter much... it's one date point. What the heck happened to Chappaquidick the other day? Herostratus (talk) 21:11, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Herostratus: Beats me. Is this film going to be released soon? wbm1058 (talk) 21:53, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I see. Category:Noindexed articles was created 30 October 2016‎, per Wikipedia:Page Curation/Suggested improvements#8. No Index until patrolled. {{NOINDEX}} will normally noindex any main namespace pages that are less than 30 days old. Unless page patrol removes the tag. I did not know that. If there was a tech-news announcement of it, I missed it. Since 3 February 2017 {{Article for deletion/dated}} has transcluded {{NOINDEX}}. I studied how indexing works in various namespaces, and documented my finding about 18 months ago on Template:INDEX. But this change last October is more recent than when I looked into it. My understanding was that all mainspace was indexed, and {{NOINDEX}} had no effect in mainspace. I think this is still the case for articles > 30 days old? wbm1058 (talk) 21:53, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Correction needed[edit]

I am the author of the AP story about the "killer rabbit" that attacked President Carter. Your entry on this incident is incorrect, as it uncritically accepts Jody Powell's rather obviously tongue-in-cheek account.

Powell was not the source of this story. In fact, he refused to confirm it when I asked him about it when seeking a second, confirming source.

I wrote about Powell's rather tall tale in the Wall Street Journal on April 30, 1984. You can confirm this with a simple Factiva search using the search terms "Rabbit Redux," which was the headline on my op-ed piece. (By that time I had left The AP and was reporting in the Washington bureau of the WSJ).

Dow Jones Factiva Dow Jones Rabbit Redux: Carter and the Press By Brooks Jackson 996 words 30 April 1984 The Wall Street Journal

The article itself is of course copyrighted to the WSJ, so your rules prohibit me from quoting my own article directly here. And it's unfortunately not available online, except behind the Factiva paywall.

However, in paraphrase, I said that the chapter that Powell devoted to this incident -- which he titled "A grave mistake" -- was actually a "mock confession" making the point that he should have known the press corps was biased against Carter and obsessed with trivia and would blow the incident up into a big deal.

He claims he gave the story to me while chatting "over a cup of tea." That should be a tip-off. Powell wasn't a teetotaler by any stretch, nor am I. Not only was Powell not the source, he even refused to release a photo of the incident which a White House photographer had captured. The photo came out only after Ronald Reagan had become president.

My WSJ article also made the point that I also at first considered the rabbit story just an amusing bit of fluff, a 9-paragraph item in a collection of gossipy tidbits in a weekly reporters-notebook feature The AP offered at the time. I was as surprised as anyone else when radio commentators broke The AP's embargo to run the item early, and when the Washington Post (and others) found it worthy of front-page play.

I also wrote that I had gotten a couple of details wrong. My source told me Carter was in a canoe, and splashed water at the rabbit with a paddle. When the photo was released years later, it showed Carter was actually in a flat-bottomed johnboat, equipped with oars. You may find this worth noting, in the interest of accuracy.

Besides my WSJ article, you can also find an accurate account of the incident in Larry Sabato's 1991 book "Feeding Frenzy, How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics."

I hope somebody will correct this erroneous Wikipedia entry. Dbrooksjackson (talk) 14:49, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The WSJ story is online via ProQuest, which you can access with a KCLS library login, or other libraries. Also Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library.
  • Jackson, Brooks (April 30, 1984), "Rabbit redux: Carter and the press", Wall Street Journal (Eastern ed.), New York, N.Y.: Dow Jones & Company Inc  – via ProQuest (subscription required) , ISSN 0099-9660
Recent retellings such as this at the Washington Post and WNYC make it seem like the photo was published at the time the story appeared. I'm still looking for original sources from August 1979. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 15:58, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I linked to a Google News archive copy of the August 30, 1979 story and made some rewrites. Needs a little more editing for encyclopedic tone. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:33, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the improvements but the article is still wrong.

This line should be deleted because, as I have explained and documented, it is untrue: "after Carter's press secretary mentioned the event to a correspondent months later." Again, Powell never mentioned it to me, and would not even provide confirmation.

You would do better to substitute: "after a brief Associated Press account was widely reprinted and became a media metaphor for Carter's political weakness." I have a scrapbook full of editorial cartoons that played off the story, depicting Carter as being haplessly attacked by a rodent.

I think it's forbidden for me to correct this on my own, isn't it? Too bad.

Also, please use this link to a less heavily rewritten version of my original story, as it appeared in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/30/archives/a-tale-of-carter-and-the-killer-rabbit-president-orders-photograph.html

(The North Carolina newspaper to which you link now heavily rewrote my original copy, and I would delete that citation. The first few grafs are the words of the NC editor, not me. The Times excised my references to the "banzai bunny" and my reference to the fact that Carter has often promised never to lie -- yet was not believed at first by his own staff. But it's otherwise closer to the original AP version.)

You can read the Post version -- which as I recall took my story word for word without deletions or rewriting -- here:

https://www.iconicauctions.com/ItemImages/000077/77813c_lg.jpeg

It is an image of the original, copyrighted version, which Carter autographed for somebody. Not sure if you can use that, but it has the virtue of being accurate.

Finally, as you can see from both the Times version and the Post version, i used the phrase "killer rabbit" in the lead. That was how it was described to me by my first source.

So, you should revise the reference to the Monty Python movie "leading some" to use the phrase. I think the movie preceded the Carter/rabbit incident by about 4 years. The movie may have influenced my source's use of the phrase "killer rabbit," but that would only be speculation.

Dbrooksjackson (talk) 04:16, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

[Sounds of crickets...]

Now I think I know a little about how John Siegenthaler felt.

Dbrooksjackson (talk) 02:00, 28 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You should remember that Wikipedia is edited by volunteers. None of us is required to work on the project, and we don't work on deadlines. The articles most prominent on my radar are projects that I have planned on a years-long timescale. This article gets about 9,000 views per month. By comparison, Jimmy Carter gets about 300,000. Bo (dog) gets 11,600. Meanwhile, Avengers: Endgame is averaging 1,500,000 per month. And then consider that the only reason we have an article on this topic is that it affected Carter's public image leading up to his electoral defeat. Those facts are essentially correct.

The article isn't about the reporter who wrote about it, or who their source was. I don't see anyone defamed or grossly misrepresented in any way. We certainly haven't killed anyone. Given all that, can you really expect everyone to drop everything and rush to make these minor adjustments? You're comparing this very slight misattribution to accusing someone of Presidential assassination? Please have a sense of proportion.

Someone will get around to it, I'm sure. I'll do it myself, eventually. But not today. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 14:52, 28 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

- - - -
I have this article on my watchlist because I found it both puzzling and fascinating that our so-called "reliable-source" media would make a mountain out of this molehill. It's not unsual for several days to pass before I spot something like this on my watchlist. I have a ton of things on my Wikipedia to-do list, and I get virtually no help from the Wikimedia Foundation working through my self-selected tasks. They don't even buy me cups of coffee. I just ordered Sabato's 1991 book via that website that made the current owner of Washington Post a multi-billionaire. At my own expense. It's really, really disappointing to find that "reliable sources" like Chris Cillizza can't even be bothered to fact-check with you before writing, in Bezos' paper, "That's the story that Jody Powell, Carter's press secretary, told the news media at the time." It doesn't help that apparently your single source for your original short, sensationalized report, did not want to go on the record. wbm1058 (talk) 15:40, 28 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Alexa, what is the Jimmy Carter rabbit incident? wbm1058 (talk) 17:54, 28 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sabato's 1991 book[edit]

Re: you can also find an accurate account of the incident in Larry Sabato's 1991 book Feeding Frenzy, How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics

From the Subject Index – listed under Carter's "killer rabbit"

  • The introductory table on p. 7 lists the case studies used for the book – those relating to Carter:
    • 1976 Jimmy Carter's "lust in the heart" Playboy interview
    • 1979 Jimmy Carter's "killer rabbit"
    • 1980 Billygate (Billy Carter and Libya)
    • 1983 Debategate (Reagan's use of Carter's debate briefing books)
  • A one paragraph summary on p. 11 says "once leaked into print by Brooks Jackson of the Associated Press"
  • The table listing the "frenzies" and the press subtext predating each (p. 72) says "Carter's presidency had soured, and the press perceived him as managerially incompetent and politically impotent."
  • A paragraph on p. 74–75 says when B. Jackson sent out the story he missed its significance. Only after editors across the country asked the AP to permit early publication did Jackson realize how the story fitted the journalistic subtext about Carter. Jackson called some of the play of his footnote of a story "irresponsible". Sabato cites the WSJ article – Paul Harvey was the first to use the AP story, according to Jackson, which helped trigger pressure from newspapers for earlier-than-scheduled publication.
  • Timing (p. 79) Frenzies are more likely in slow news periods such as the doldrums of summer – the absence of hard news allows relatively insignificant events (e.g. Billygate, "killer rabbit", Debategate) to get blown out of proportion
  • Humor (p. 129) "President Carter's killer rabbit provided fodder for endless gags about his political ineptitude and impotence."

Jody Powell is mentioned in the book, per the Name Index:

  • In relation to Debategate (p. 11 and 81)
  • Quoted: "by August 1979, if the President had been set upon by a pack of wild dogs, a good portion of the press would have sided with the dogs and declared that he had provoked the attack." (p. 92) – from Powell's 1984 book, The Other Side of the Story

So no confirmation or denial that Powell was or wasn't Jackson's source is given in Sabato's 1991 book. And that's The Rest of the Story. :)

I guess we need to use the WSJ piece for that. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:32, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

" demonstrated that Carter's presidency was hapless and enfeebled"[edit]

I removed the statement that the incident " demonstrated that Carter's presidency was hapless and enfeebled. That is an editor's opinion, and does not belong in the article. If some reliable source or named political expert said that, we could include text that "Mr. Expert and the Daily Blast said that the incident demonstrated that Carter's presidency was hapless and enfeebled." But you cannot just stick that into the article as the conclusion of Wikipedia. The Wash Post reference for the passage just says "the bizarre story captured the press's and the public's imagination, becoming a metaphor for Carter's hapless, enfeebled presidency" A direct quote of that would be fine. Edison (talk) 14:51, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps this cartoon could be added to the "Media accounts" section?[edit]

Hard to place when this was published. Possibly after it was discovered that the Reagan campaign staff had access to Carter's campaign staff's files? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dye46 (talk • contribs) 17:43, 9 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

File:Pogo-JimmyCarterRabbitOliphant.jpg
Political cartoon depicting the incident

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Dye46 (talk • contribs) 14:11, 9 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I like the cartoon and I think that it is relevant. But the filename shouldn't have the text "Pogo" in it. Walt Kelly died in 1973. As far as I know, no newspapers carried Pogo in 1976, the year Carter was elected. Having the text "Pogo" in the name of the file gives a misleading impression, considering that the style of this image is so much like Walt Kelly's work right down to that being the same kind of boat that Pogo and his friends always used for fishin' and the like.2600:1700:6759:B000:1C64:8308:33BC:E2D6 (talk) 05:54, 2 May 2023 (UTC)Christopher Lawrence Simpson[reply]

Press secretary Powell opinion article—UNDUE weight?[edit]

HAL333 has repeatedly reinstated (e.g., [1], [2], [3]) content sourced to a 1984 opinion article by Jody Powell, the Carter administration's White House Press Secretary. In his article, Powell claims:

A few months later, columnist George Will reportedly told friends that the president's timid response to the attack ... had led directly to the assault on our embassy in Tehran. Columnist Robert Novak claimed to have seen communications intercepts that proved the invasion of Afghanistan was also a direct result of the incident.

For context, the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan were among the most significant historical events in the second half of the twentieth century, both with antecedents going back decades before 1979 (such as the 1953 Iranian coup d'état), making the attribution to the "Jimmy Carter rabbit incident" almost farcical. George Will apparently never made this claim in any of his prolific public appearances or in his regular Washington Post opinion column; rather, Will's private remark was passed along to Powell as hearsay by unnamed "friends" of Will. Meanwhile, academic historians have spent years debating the reasons for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, including insights gleaned from documents declassified following the end of the Cold War, but no academic historian (to my knowledge at least) has ever corroborated the existence of the "communications intercepts" mentioned by Novak (assuming, of course, that Powell can even be trusted to accurately summarize Novak's argument... which is doubtful, considering that Novak was a critic of the Carter administration).

In my view, all of this speculation is WP:UNDUE and has no weight in an encyclopedia article. If Will himself did not see fit to repeat his accusation in public, and the academic historiography has completely ignored these WP:FRINGE alternative hypotheses, then it certainly does not belong in the lede summary. I have tagged the material accordingly.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:19, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The entire Jimmy Carter rabbit fiasco in the press occurred because Jody Powell (somewhat accidentally) disclosed it. We have an encyclopedia entry here because of him. What he has to say—or rather write—is of paramount interest to the reader and is thus due. I agree that the alleged claims from Novak and Will are farcical. But that's exactly why they should be included. As examples, they illustrate how ridiculously overblown the rabbit incident was in the press, particularly among conservative writers. There really should be no problem with its inclusion if we attribute it to Powell and use hedged language like "reportedly". It's also misleading to label that article as an opinion piece: it's more like a frank first-person narrative. ~ HAL333 05:34, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Powell may have disclosed the event, but it does not follow that everything he says, as a primary source, is automatically due for inclusion here. Wikipedia still requires secondary sources to establish weight. For comparison, supermarket scanner moment has considerably broader sourcing and does not simply parrot the original New York Times article.
Additionally, while it might be obvious to us that the statements attributed to Novak and Will make for shockingly poor history, there is no guarantee that everyone will see it the same way. After all, if fringe views (e.g., "journalist Robert Novak stated he saw documents that revealed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a result of Carter's purported weakness in the incident") are presented without rebuttal—and even granted prominent placement in the lede—then it is possible to imagine at least some readers taking the assertions at face value. Again, secondary sources would not only help to establish weight but also provide crucial context usually elided by fringe or unduly self-serving narratives.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:18, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
it does not follow that everything he says, as a primary source, is automatically due for inclusion here. I didn't say that, but nice straw man. statements attributed to Novak and Will make for shockingly poor history Their interpretations may be poor history, but the fact they were were reported to have said it by Powell is damn good history worthy of Wikipedia. secondary sources would not only help to establish weight but also provide crucial context Why don't you add the fricking secondary sources then? Imagine what constructive work you could have done, how much you could have improved this article and others on Wikipedia with all the time and energy you wasted making all this hoopla. Do you know how ridiculous this is? This discussion is now longer than the effing article. ~ HAL333 07:08, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary, putting information into the article that everyone agrees is false is poor form. The quote by itself should not be in the article, and asking other people to develop a form of the quote that would be acceptable for inclusion is wrong. Make it worthy of inclusion or remove it. 24.56.237.49 (talk) 21:22, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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