Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Travis McHenry
Dismissal of McHenry's micronations, or the coverage of them, as not "serious" betrays some ''very'' serious misconceptions about the relationship between the serious and the absurd, starting with the idea that attention for its own sake is the only possible motive for outrageous actions. Review the Wikipedia articles on Diogenes|Diogenes the Cynic, John Cage, performance art, and surrealism, to name just a few, for extreme examples to the contrary. Diogenes has been honored in painting and statuary two millennia after he lived, and was a major influence on Stoicism—for doing things far more outrageous than anything McHenry has done. While I can't read Thomas Harlander's mind, I don't see his lengthy biographical article as simply laughing at McHenry; he notes McHenry's formal training in method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute|Lee Strasberg Institute. The role of micronations as satirical commentary on the nation-state system comes through clearly in Harlander's article; he even mentions how McHenry's work as a military intelligence analyst contributed to his perception of nations as absurd. The joke isn't on McHenry. Imposing a view of Harlander's source as purely a frivolous "puff piece" or a lampoon of McHenry, or a view of McHenry himself as purely a publicity seeker, does violence to the source material available. Deleting this article on such grounds would be a violation of , which is all about letting Wikipedia reflect, without bias, the sources on which it is based. Only hindsight prevents such an approach from dismissing Diogenes as readily as Travis McHenry
— NONE, NONE
Stance: keep
Cited policy: WP:NPOV (Wikipedia:Neutral point of view)