Talk:Wally Herger

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[edit] comment

My memory is that Wally got a girl pregnant while they were in high school so he married her and she became his first wife.

That is correct. He also avoided service in Vietnam: http://www.newsreview.com/chico/Content?oid=oid%3A26404

Does anybody know why he is not going to enter the race to succeed Bill Thomas?

[edit] Unencyclopaedic?

Why is Herger's net worth not encyclopaedic, while his church affiliation is?... QuartierLatin1968 01:35, 1 February 2006 (UTC) [For the record, I'm not 165.106.209.107.]

Is this really a serious question? Religious affiliation is an essential mainstay of biographical information, whereas "net worth" rarely enters the question unless there is particular and noteworthy writing and criticism on the subject (e.g. Teresa Heinz Kerry, Bill Gates). I have no problems with the link being present but the insertion is very apparently an attempt by the anon to portray Herger negatively, hence the comments here. --TJive 02:15, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

It's funny how the things that just seem immediately self-evident to me and those that seem self-evident to you are wholly different. In spite of globalization, the internet and the airplane, people's viewpoints remain extraordinarily diverse. So why is it 'negative' exactly that this man has some given amount of wealth? He has a certain class position, everybody has a certain class position; I see no point sweeping the fact under the carpet. (I do, however, think it was very sensible of you to leave in the link.) QuartierLatin1968 18:11, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

why is it 'negative' exactly that this man has some given amount of wealth?

That is a good question, but unfortunately ill-posed if in my direction.

everybody has a certain class position; I see no point sweeping the fact under the carpet.

Ostensibly....well you will have to excuse me, I am not always up to date on the latest Wiki legalisms and jargon, but at the latest point I understood it to be so, this is not a forum for the class analysis and musings of individual editors. --TJive 00:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on Wiki legalisms either – however, this person's a US representative, and his tax records are a matter of public record, so I would foresee no legal obstacle. It still seems to me a strange rationale for deleting material. You personally may not apply a class analysis of public officials (neither do I, in any systematic way), but it's a perfectly common procedure in scholarly discourse worldwide. For example, have you heard of Charles Beard's analysis of the framers of the Constitution? Now that's a famous work which many have criticized, but it remains an important point of reference in US historiography. It may well be that modern-day students of US politics may want to compare Beard's investigations for the 1780s with those of the present Congress. At any rate, I don't see how it enriches Wikipedia to remove information that might inform a reader curious about such questions. QuartierLatin1968 05:18, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

There are a number of things which are or may be public record that nonetheless are not considered encyclopedic information - for instance (briefly, off the top of my head), a list or extensive explication of one's voting record, primary campaign donators, the location of his office, a phone number, a mailing address, etc. You cite Charles Beard but should not fail to realize that in its controversy (and wide rejection) that it is tendentious to cite this as precedent for our purposes here.

Simply put, I do not object to making the information available via external linking, but do not submit to the anon's body contribution, which in intention is little more than the beginning of a political argument. --TJive 06:11, 2 February 2006 (UTC)