US Presidential Election

[Pat_Palmer]

A quick google search of "Clinton hammered Obama" turns up many examples from the most prestigous newspapers in the US, India and UK, including the Times of London. 

The possible negative consequences of using quotes that contain polemic is that they might be misconstrued by readers as being a position being put forth by Citizendium.   And don't tell me that all readers are smart enough to know better; if they were, campaigns would get no payoff from using that kind of language.

I for one come to an encyclopedia looking for indisputable information about a candidate, not to hear a sermon.

I am not against all quotes.  I can understand the occasional use of a campaigner's manipulative quote if the quote is very carefully identified as an example of the hard-hitting nature of the campaign. 

And there are the occasionally striking zingers that remain in the public consciousness indefinitely, i.e., Bill Clinton's "I didn't inhale" statement, or whichever presidential candidate coined the term mugwump ("my opponent has his mug on one side of the fence, and his wump on the other").

[RJensen]

I'm happy to say we don't cover the froth and spin at CZ we cover the meat and potatoes.  How to write these articles is a challenge. Experience helps--like writing lots of enyclopedia articles and lots of scholarly ones as well. 

CZ readers have to learn how to handle politics and political issues, arguments, rhetoric and symbolism. That is not easy but we do try.

We don't write sermons; it is false and insulting to suggest CZ does that. As for "indisputable information", that's how engineers talk, not political historians. 

As for style, CZ tries to model itself on the best writers, and these folks appear in the best newspapers and magazines.  I taught basic history writing to undergrads for decades and it's a challenge.  The engineering mind especially was a challenge--those folks don't handle complecity but not ambiguity. They like "hard facts" -- I think because they fear they are easily manipulated by soft rhetoric.

[Robert_W_King]

We don't write sermons; it is false and insulting to suggest CZ does that. As for "indisputable information", that's how engineers talk, not political historians. 

As for style, CZ tries to model itself on the best writers, and these folks appear in the best newspapers and magazines.  I taught basic history writing to undergrads for decades and it's a challenge.  The engineering mind especially was a challenge--those folks don't handle complecity but not ambiguity. They like "hard facts" -- I think because they fear they are easily manipulated by soft rhetoric.

I am insulted that you even try to generalize an entire group of people into how you think they are.

[Denis Cavanagh]

No need to be insulted. Its a fact that people geared towards humanities and people who are geared towards technical stuff generally think differently.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Regardless of how many journalists use terms such as "hammered", it is not useful for an encyclopedia uncritically to repeat them without careful dissection and analysis of the behaviour of such reporters. It is just not good enough to say that that is what journalists write: we are not preparing a newspaper. I think it is imperative that CZ keeps its distance from political polemic, other than perhaps to record it in a detached and carefully analytical way. Including such terminology in an otherwise fairly balanced article is dangerous: it should therefore be confined to reporting on the presidential campaign, but even so, with care.

The caricature of engineers and artists etc is very annoying, even if a large proportion fit the stereotype. In my view, the danger is that the promotion of stereotypes coerces people into actually following them, against their own nature. Of course, scientific training tends [especially in engineering type subjects] to promote precision and perhaps an intolerance of ambiguity; equally, the humanities are frequently too accepting of lack of precision and careless arguments. However, a significant number of people rise above the stereotypes and this is where our attention should be focused.

[RJensen]

We use standard scholarly rhetoric...terms like "the candate hammered at his opponent" are part of the scholar's language and are found in the best scholarly journals. The journalists got it from us. (It's in Shakespeare and Dickens too.)

The journalists we read are the best political writers in the US (and Britain).  Ridiculing journalists is unacceptable in serious discourse. They actually do the original research talking to voters, candidates, strategists and analysts.   Most of the CZ political articles have been written by very experienced scholars with numerous books and articles, so the absurd notion that we are in the thrall of some TV newscaster is unacceptable. 

As for engineers, I am describing the experience I had teaching hundreds of undergraduate engineers the basics of political and military history. I had to read and grade many hundreds of papers they wrote.  They had a hard time with politics because of the ambiguity and their fear of getting tricked or misled by rhetoric, but the battles and technology was far more to their liking. (There is also a gender thing--the military history classes had a visible overwhelming prepondeance of men.) I will add I have taught just as many history and humanities majors, and they have very different problems. (For example they strongly dislike quantitative evidence.)  I think a stereotype is a generalization not based on real evidence. In this case I had the evidence in the papers I read every 3 weeks.

evidence:
McCullough Truman  - "The committee hammered away at Somervell for four and a half hours..."
Rediker 2007 "Abolitionist after abolitionist hammered away at the horrors of the ..."
Eric Foner: "Lincoln hammered awayat slavery"
Halberstam: in  McCarthy's  “first speeches after Wheeling, he hammered away at those "bright young men ..."
Bob Woodward “Brennan hammered away in his dissent, arguing that
David Brinkley (2007) re Katrina: "And he hammered away at local companies like Freeport-McMoran ..."
James McPherson: "newspapers hammered at the theme..."

[Joe Quick]

I think I mostly agree with Richard.  A couple of minor caveats:

1) Someone mentioned "spin words."  These really don't belong in a CZ article about a politician and I think we all agree on that point.  But there are some words (none come to mind off the top of my head and I'm not going to go looking for them) that are used in a number of articles about politicians on CZ that are very borderline and can easily be taken as spin by someone eho is just slightly more sensitive to this or that.  Let's try to tone those down a bit.

2) Election coverage could be accomplished most efficiently in its own article.  I don't have any problem with including broad discussion of a politician's positions in the main biography of him/her.  In fact, I think that kind of information should be highly encouraged.  But if its not going to be relevant ten days from now, then lets just put it where will eventually end up anyway.

3) On the issue of citing news stories, it needs to be made painfully clear that this or that is a portrayal in the media (with all the baggage that entails).  The people posting in this thread have probably all learned to see such things for what they are, but my experience with the general public is that very few people actually can tell the difference.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

I give up with this. The whole point is that the candidates did not "hammer away", according to many people's understanding of the term [including mine]. If you exaggerate things with these words, what is left when there really are extreme situations? Precisely nothing.

[Pat_Palmer]

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

I thought I'd throw that in, since this conversation seems to be degenerating at the moment and I'm having flashbacks to playing with mean kids when I was 5 years old.

[Pat_Palmer]

We don't write sermons; it is false and insulting to suggest CZ does that.

So, Richard, I'm the one who used the word sermon.  Then you wrote the above.  Just what are you trying to say?  Are you implying that I lied and insulted you?  I'd really like to know.

[Matt Innis]

I tend to agree with all of you, but that is my nature.  It seems to me that if we insist on throwing in the words 'hammering away', etc., the way to do it is to add a section in the '2008 Presidential Election' article that discusses how the media is using these words for whatever reasons.  That is the real encyclopedia story; the way the media tries to make something interesting out of something that is otherwise not notable.  When all is said and done, a presidential election boils down to a few 'spin words' like 'Reaganomics' or 'Clinton Healthcare' that most never understand, but are told that they are either 'good' or 'bad'.  I think what we need to do to be something valuable for 'inquiring minds' is to explain what 'Reaganomics', etc. is/was so that the reader can make an informed decision whether they think it is good or bad.  In other words, what was Hilary hammering about.. if we describe that in real terms and issues, the word itself loses its sting - good or bad from any perspective.

But keep the candidate articles dry and tame, sticking as close to the issues as possible.

By the way, keep it professional.

[RJensen]

Historians use the term "hammered away at" to indicate a strong, repeated political attack.

That is part of the language as used by the best writers and analysts of the last 50 years.  Therefore we use "hammered" at CZ when appropriate.   If people gain an appreciation for the nuances of politics and the power of the language from reading CZ, then we have achieved our mission.  Not using the best words??-- that seems such a waste.

I have been consulting in recent months with a publisher of political books for grades 2-4, and also for a group of teachers in grades 6-11 writing lesson plans in political history.  It's a fascinating exercise--how to take the substance out of history and leave just the simple symbols. I think that is necessary for elementary kids, while I try to help the teachers of older kids add more substance. For CZ we should aim at writing in terms of vocabulary and complexity of ideas for a college educated audience capable of reading a college-level textbook.
 

[Denis Cavanagh]

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

I thought I'd throw that in, since this conversation seems to be degenerating at the moment and I'm having flashbacks to playing with mean kids when I was 5 years old.

There's no need to react like this. It is possible for two different people to have two entirely valid arguments. I think the major issue at this point in time is language; personally I don't see anything particularly wrong with the article. Richard has so far to my knowledge agreed to move the candidacy run to the US election article, so from this discussion something has been achieved!