Talk:Andrew C. McCarthy

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I removed the unsupported claim that McCarthy engaged in "conspiracy theories" during the Obama administration. There was no reliable source to support this claim.  It is attack by an editor of Wikipedia on McCarthy.  There has been no reliable source provided to support this.  There needs to be a reliable source provided to support this claim before this defaming information is re-inserted into the article.--CharlesShirley (talk) 12:28, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe removal was correct action because WP:BLP says remove contentious "poorly sourced" material. There was a cite to a book review but WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV says that for opinions in-text attribution would be required, and in any case picking a negative book review was not a WP:NPOV thing to do (I had no trouble googling a positive one). Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:46, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: "Conspiracy theory" claims from editor of Wikipedia

message: RS Perennial list:. Thus, there is zero reason to remove content sourced to Mother Jones, other RS and primary sources. Content that is 100% verifiably accurate. The Daily Beast is also considered a RS per the RS perennial list, and there is ZERO reason to doubt that the content sourced to the Daily Beast is inaccurate. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:28, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll compromise on leaving the Ayers matter in even though I still think it is undue. The whole of the information in the MJ source is in this quote:  This doesn't really support the text in any case; I think we should stick with the New Yorker source you found for this reason if nothing else. The DB source is very thin as well, and RSN says "Some editors advise caution when using this source for controversial statements of fact related to living persons."Shinealittlelight (talk) 17:45, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  There is no "controversial statement of fact", so that caution regarding the Daily Beast is completely redundant in this case. The MoJo sources is a source for the fact that McCarthy pushed the insane conspiracy theory that Ayers wrote Obama's autobiography. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:49, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The New Yorker source is sufficient for the statement that he promoted the claim about Ayers. The MJ source only implies this (it directly says only that he wasn't asked a question), and MJ is clearly inferior to New Yorker per RSN.Shinealittlelight (talk) 17:51, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  This is very tendentious. The MoJo source explicitly says that McCarthy pushed the falsehood and links to the actual piece written by McCarthy where he explicitly pushes the falsehood. That "caution" regarding the Daily Beast is null and void, given that there is ZERO dispute over the fact that McCarthy pushed the theory. It's incredibly weak form and unprincipled to argue for the exclusion of text based on a misreading of the RS perennial list, and then edit-war even after your misreading of the list has been corrected. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 18:01, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Your claim that  is just not true. The MJ source says only that  I'm not edit warring; we have a good faith disagreement, and we need to try to find consensus. My proposal was to accept your substitute source (the New Yorker), which seemed clearly superior to me, and to drop my concern that the matter was undue. Let's both try to give a little here to improve the article. Shinealittlelight (talk) 18:39, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Recent editing seems to be more about New Republic than Mother Jones or New Yorker, and I see that Snooganssnoogans also wants to insert thinkprogress.org, mediamatters.org, etc.. The New Republic source is biased so citing it without attribution would be a violation of WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV, and also it contains a quote of McCarthy which is available in National Review where he said it, so citing New Republic would be a violation of WP:RS ("To ensure accuracy, the text of quoted material is best taken from (and cited to) the original source being quoted.") I believe that Snooganssnoogans's insertion and re-insertion of such contentious material is not appropriate in a BLP. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:45, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  There is a consensus that Mother Jones is a RS 

message: Here I've deleted the word "false" from the assertion, "promoted the false theory that Bill Ayers, co-founder of the militant radical left-wing organization Weather Underground, had authored Obama's autobiography Dreams from My Father". The assertion is unsupported here and is made in Wikipedia's editorial voice. There are sources reporting that Ayres has himself has claimed to have written the book (), and other sources saying that he must have been joking when he said that or, perhaps, he said that in order to hypa a book of hia own ). I have no idea whether Ayers or anyone else ghost-wrote the book, but if this articles is to assert that assertions that Ayers wrote it are false, that assertion needs support, and WP:DUE needs to be followed if alternative sources with different viewpoints on that exist. Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 18:49, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no dispute among anyone who isn't a delusional crackpot that Obama authored Dreams from my Father. By suggesting to readers that there is an active dispute, we are violating both FRINGE and BLP. The notion that Obama didn't author Dreams from my Father can either be considered a falsehood or it can be described as a conspiracy theory. When you removed "false theory", I added "conspiracy theory", which is an attempt at compromise. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:07, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed unsupported editorial assertion re falseness 

message: What's wrong with saying McCarthy did an about-face? First, he writes a book praising Trump, and Trump endorses it. Then he says Trump has done something impeachable. How is that not an about-face? We don't need any source at all for that. Would you prefer the word "reversal"? Stylistically, it just seems we need to transition into the opposite attitude; otherwise it's jarring and confusing to the reader. How do we transition without using a transitional phrase? YoPienso (talk) 10:39, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Nothing. But it has to be backed up with a reliable source. If there was a reliable source that said it then I missed it. Was that quote from a r.s.? And if yes, which one?  That's all. - CharlesShirley (talk) 12:58, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

text: This was apparently kicked off by this revert by me. There have been some back and forth edits about this since then. This, Iis not an about-face and not not a reversal. it is incorrect and misleading to characterize it as such. This is a revision of opinion based on events occurring subsequent to the opinion having been stated. Analogously, one might have said in 2015 that Donald Trump had not been elected President. Subsequently, in 2018, one might say that Donald Trump had been elected President. That would not be an about-face or a reversal of opinion regarding the question of whether or not Donald Trump had ever been elected President, it would be the statement of a new opinion about that, taking into account the occurrence of an event which occurred subsequently to the previously stated opinion. Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 14:36, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: For starters, we should move the sentence about McCarthy Hillary Clinton into a new subsection about Hillary Clinton her. I tried to, inserting it between the Barack Obama and the Jamal Khashoggi subsections, but it messed up the citations and I don't know how to fix them. I think I'll leave it that way to show you, expecting someone will either revert it or fix it. That way the subsection on Trump is on Trump, and makes more sense and has a better flow. YoPienso (talk) 15:53, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, yay! The citation problem disappeared when I saved my edit. How does that look now to you guys? YoPienso (talk) 15:55, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  McCarthy's change of opinion about Trump 

message: How do reliable sources describe the subject? Per BLP I would keep the lead sentence as "basic" as possible and flesh out details, ie, right wing, ect later in the article. --Malerooster (talk) 15:20, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: That relates to this edit where you (correctly) removed "right-wing". That seems to have come from an unsupported POV insertion here. Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 16:49, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead  sentence 

message: I'm all about hammering on Trumpites, but this is really, beyond absurd. Are we trying to make the article utterly incomprehensible? My edits made the article demonstrably more clear, factual, and (only incidentally) more neutral--I only bothered improving it because this line is completely incoherent:
And we're going to call *my* edits "vandalism"? OK then. Tahlor (talk) 04:10, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe that Valjean should either respect WP:NORESVAND or take such accusations to an admin noticeboard. But earlier discussions on this talk page re "false" "conspiracy" etc. have not resulted in improvement. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:55, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  The red flags that alerted me to problems were the removal of "false" and "conspiracy theories". That lends credence to McCarthy and his false and fringe views. RS do not do that. Otherwise, feel free to improve the article. -- Valjean (talk) 15:32, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incomprehensibility is the goal? 

message: I have a problem with the word "promoted" in the context of "McCarthy promoted the conspiracy theory that Bill Ayers...". I just read the cited article and it doesn't strike me as a 100% endorsement of Cashill's book by McCarthy. Here is a quote from the cited Daily Beast article:
:Given the even wilder charges the right leveled against Obama, it’s a bit surprising the authorship conspiracy hasn’t taken off among conservatives. It barely made a dent in 2008, despite approving nods from the National Review’s Andy McCarthy, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity.
I think that "approving nods" is a much better description of McCarthy's cited article than "promoted", and so is more accurate that the other citations (which are partisan attempts to extract the most negative mileage from McCarthy's writing). 
We also have the fact that Cashill's book is not obviously a conspiracy theory in the way that "the 9/11 hijackers landed the planes and disembarked the passengers" is a conspiracy theory; it had a facade of plausibility that matches the somewhat silly speculations as to who really was William Shakespeare, and which the likelihood of disproof is not immediately obvious. Here is another example of this uncertainty: McCarthy's then NR colleague Jonah Goldberg initially dismissed Cashill, but later wrote this:
:I am not sure what to make of the story that Ayers has now admitted to writing Obama’s autobiography. If it pans out, that is to my mind a very big story. Stay tuned. But I do think I should revise my earlier pooh-poohing of Jack Cashill’s effort to prove the Ayers-Obama connection. A while back, a close friend of mine (and a pretty famous person in NRland) harrangued me about how I didn’t give Cashill’s argument enough attention or consideration and that it makes a pretty persuasive case. This friend then walked me through it for a while and I was impressed. I’m still not sure what the truth is, but whether this latest story pans out or not, I figured I should at least withdraw some of my, uh, pooh-pooh.
As far as I can see Goldberg never went beyond this, he never called Cashill's account to be fact (at least at NR), but this does highlight the fact that Cashill's book is not prima facie a conspiracy theory (or more precisely the source of one). It takes a bit of digging to determine it is most likely not true (incidentally, Kathryn Jean Lopez concluded that Ayers was 'putting on' the reporter who was the source of the 'admission').
Also, McCarthy never wrote another original article on this subject, he only posted two back-and-forth blog posts regarding it, neither of which give absolute promotion to the book.  At most he wrote "Cashill has written a very thorough analysis...As I said, I resisted reading Cashill’s analysis for a long time — and he’s not the first to advance the idea that Obama did not write his book — because I didn’t want to be accused of wading into what could be taken as nutter stuff.  I was then persuaded that I should at least look at it with an open mind.  I’m convinced it raises major questions.  I tried to treat them in a serious way." Given all this, "promotion" does not appear to be NPOV.
So, I'd like to change "promoted" to "gave credence to". Thoughts?
Thanks. Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 17:20, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Promoted?