Talk:Shelby Foote

message: Someone should update the information about his death and remove where he currently lives. Tfine80 28 June 2005 18:00 (UTC).
Ibelieve that he is most certainly not interred where this article states. The forrests are buried in a park overlooking the University of Tennessee Medical School. 76.246.31.217 (talk) 16:27, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Update death

message: If Foote "never felt Jewish", then I'm wondering why there's so much devoted here to his Jewish ancestry. Is this a southern POV that it would be controversial that Foote was Jewish? I don't understand.
:For whatever it's worth, anti-Semitism wasn't as strong in the Old South as non-Southerners might expect (though it definitely existed). Several Jewish regiments fought for the Confederacy- Mississippi raised the most, I believe- and there are synagogues in the South dating back to the early nineteenth century. It wouldn't be out of line to have a sentence or two about his heritage and how that affected his outlook and his place in the world, but that huge block of text was definitely inappropriate. Stilgar135 18:49, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Jewishness?

message: I added a short paragraph about Foote and his relationship with Southern identity, but I'm not overly pleased with it. The point I'm trying to get across is that Foote, as a Southerner, respects the cause, but he's also very clear-eyed about it, to the extent that he holds several beliefs that true neo-Confederate zealots would find abhorent. Despite this, he's still treated with a great deal of respect in the South, because the Narrative does demonstrate sympathy for the CSA, but not the out-and-out reverence of, say, Douglas Southall Freeman. Anyone who can make that section better, please do. Stilgar135 15:56, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Foote and Southern identity

message: Anyone else feel that image of Foote is a bit ominous at best (and creepy at worst)?  Is there a better image we can replace it with? --CPAScott 15:30, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Photo

message: What does: "He considered Abraham Lincoln and Nathan Bedford Forrest to be the only two authentic geniuses of the war, a belief that raised the ire of Forrest's granddaughter." mean? Why would the granddaughter have ire ("rage, fury") about this statement? Are there any quotes from this (unnamed) granddaughter about Foote? Where is this statement in the Civil War narrative? Unless some sense can be made, this probably should be deleted... ? Scott1329m 20:23, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't write that, but I remember the Foote anecdote from the Ken Burns documentary that that it's referring to.  He told of having interviewed Forrest's grandaughter.  When he offered the opinion of Lincoln and Forrest being the war's two "authentic geniuses", she objected to linking the two, saying that "she never thought much of Mr. Lincoln".  I agree that the sentence is confusing and could probably just be removed altogether, but having explained it I'll leave that to someone else. Jkiang 03:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In that case, I'll defer editing to someone who has seen the television program. It is interesting to know what that means, however. Who is the granddaughter? Is she a sister of NBF III who was killed in WWII? If so, the NBF III page here doesn't mention his siblings. Scott1329m 11:06, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I, too, remember the anecdote from the documentary, but I seem to recall reading it somewhere also. If I remember where I read it I'll try to clarify "ire." BeeDub65 03:28, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Ire

message: I've added a couple of citations and an external reference. I'm new to this so please advise if they are incorrect or inefficient. BeeDub65 03:28, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Citations and References

message: Not sure this is relevant but don't want to just throw it away...(Foote's ancestor, Richard Foote, came in 1688 from London to Chotank in King George County, Virginia, to represent his father's interest in settlement of the Brenttown tract.)... BeeDub65 01:04, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Trivia

message: Most quotes were unsourced. Stored here until sources can be located. BeeDub65 03:33, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Quotes

message: "With geographic and cultural roots in the Mississippi Delta alluvium, Foote's life and writing paralleled the radical shift from the agrarian planter system of the Old South to the Civil Rights era of the New South." Are these the words of historian Dan Carter? If so, they should be enclosed in quotations and attributed to Carter. Also, I don't think it fits in the first paragraph. Perhaps put it at the end? Such a summary makes more sense at the end of the article than the beginning, I think.Cwoodw1 20:01, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I wrote that. I've never read Dan Carter. I thought of it more an introduction than a summary. BeeDub65 04:37, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Quotation in First Paragraph

message: :File:Foote0001.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If there is  other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page.  Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.
BetacommandBot (talk) 06:29, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Fair use rationale for File:Foote0001.jpg

message: :File:Foote0001.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If there is  other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page.  Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.
BetacommandBot (talk) 20:53, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Fair use rationale for File:Foote0001.jpg

message: Does anyone have a fair-use picture of Shelby Foote?
TuckerResearch (talk) 02:38, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Picture

message: Anyone happen to know if he's related, even distantly, to Henry S. Foote? Mellophonius (talk) 19:22, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Related to Henry Foote?

message: If the two Foote's great grandfathers were brothers, wouldn't that make them third cousins and not second cousins as indicated in the article?  The article on Horton Foote does state their relationship to be third cousins.
Raaronson (talk) 12:15, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shelby Foote's Relationship to Horton Foote 

message: The user Springee is now apparently stalking me and has done the most inexplicable edit I've seen in a long time: delete a "citations needed" request for unsourced claims. The claim that Foote has received "generally favorable reviews" is not that at all adequately supported nor is the Wiki voice claim that "Foote labored to maintain his objectivity".  Snooganssnoogans (talk) 00:44, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The user has never edited this page, did not write the text in the article and has not read any of the sources, yet has the gall to say that the claims are "reasonably supported by the citations"?! One of the sentences doesn't even have a citation. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 00:49, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  User inexplicable deletes request for citations 

message: Re the info accredited to Ta-Nehisi Coates, I do believe that the comment re the fact that he is not a historian is certainly to be considered.  However, all things considered, it seems to me that his comments are important to the understanding of the controversy surrounding this man.  (Just to mention, this is not easy for me--I watched the Ken Burns film and I, a "Northerner", came to be fully under the spell of this man.  And I still am...) Gandydancer (talk) 16:29, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Legacy section 

message: After thoroughly reading this article a number of times, a clear political bias is rather apparent. Extensive criticism is laid out against Foote, which is fair based on the controversial nature of the civil war. However, the critics and the negative criticism in this article all lean towards the political left, and the article is just short of blatantly labeling Foote as a clear racist. I am not the most avid supporter of Foote's work myself, but the bias on this page is glaringly obvious. To quote Ta-Nehisi Coates, a journalist with possibly the most severe anti-conservative/anti-white bias in modern existence, as a verifiable critic of Foote- is juvenile and ignorant of inherent bias. Wikipedia wasn't meant for this, and I am sure Foote would be appalled to read this article about him if he were alive today. The entire "Scholarly Reception" section completely strips Foote of any historical knowledge whatsoever, and falls inches short of calling him an outright bigot. This entire section demonizes Foote, and makes him appear empathetic to the entire KKK in general- which is entirely false. It might be nearly impossible in today's time, but someone with less political and racial bias needs to review and edit this article. In order to legitimize my argument (to myself), I asked my coworker, who had never heard of this man, to read this entire article and give me a one sentence summary of who he was. My coworker, who is highly-educated himself, stated "a pseudo-historian, white supremacist, racist who wrote a trilogy about the civil war back in the day". I laughed, as my self-justification was confirmed. If you know nothing about Shelby Foot and you went to Wikipedia to read about him, then this is the (wildly incorrect) conclusion you would come away with. Then here is the kicker: He followed up his statement by adding "The article seemed rather left-leaning". He himself is a registered Democrat, as am I. 
Although I do support some of the criticism of Foote (clear Lost Cause sympathizer), this article is unfair to new readers, and Foote himself. A disclaimer of political bias in this article needs to be noted on the top of the article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Donnie Narco (talk • contribs) 19:14, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Shocking when an encyclopedia article presents a biographical subject as they really were. Your friend's characterization wasn't far from reality. Foote was a good novelist, and a not-so-good historian. After all, we're talking about the man who, as the article says, told Walker Percy that the wealthy black character Theo Wiggins was one of "those bourgeois negroes, and I never really knew a single bourgeois nigger in my life". Carlstak (talk) 00:33, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

text: Also, to address your concerns about Ta-Nehisi Coates, he's certainly not an academic historian—he doesn't have a college degree—but he is a senior editor at The Atlantic who has good standing in academe. He is cited here with a reference to an article he wrote in the Atlantic in which he quotes statements by Shelby Foote concerning the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest (of whom Foote had a picture hanging on his wall) and the Fort Pillow Massacre made in an interview published in the summer 1999 issue of The Paris Review. The citation refers only to the quotes. Coates is also quoted in the "Legacy" section of our article; as an important social commentator on black culture in the US , a mention of his commentary on Shelby Foote's work is not undue emphasis and is not out-of-place. I must say your calling him "a journalist with possibly the most severe anti-conservative/anti-white bias in modern existence" is rather exaggerated. Carlstak (talk) 02:11, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Did you mean to ironically confirm Donnie's comment? 72.193.242.86 (talk) 16:24, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Political Bias