Talk:Pat Tillman

San Jose native?

In its headline for covering the AP story, the San Jose Mercury News calls Tillman a "San Jose native", but doesn't cite any evidence (birthplate etc.). Anyone know? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:36, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Looks like he was born in San Jose [1] ElBenevolente 02:05, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Does anyone else find it really freakish that the article was started a week before Tilman died? Eek. Isomorphic 02:16, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I started the article last week after I saw Pat Tillman was on Requested articles. I was a bit freaked out when I saw the news this morning. -- ElBenevolente 02:46, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That is indeed freakish! ChessPlayer

Links in the Article

I delinked "killed in action" as it linked to a page which was for defining KIA as "killed in action". "KIA" wasn't used in the article, so the link was linking to a page which had no useful information. ChessPlayer 22:13, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that's true now. But in a few years time that may not necessily be so. It's quite reasonable, for example, to imagine the KIA article being updated with various militaries' rules for calling someone "KIA" as opposed to "missing presumed killed", MIA, etc., links to some future memorial wiki, or other stuff one can't imagine now. Equally (I'm stretching things for this case, but not for others) someone could go to KIA and hit "what links here" and get a list of those people so designated (yeah, it'll be very far from comprehensive, but it's a start). So, in general, I don't think that because an article is useless now (you right in saying that for the purposes of the Tillman article, the KIA one mostly is useless) doesn't mean it will always be so, and so that isn't a great criterion as to whether one should link to it. This particular case, I'll grant, is marginal. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:05, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, when the KIA article says something relevant to this article, no doubt someone will link it again :-)....but for now, it just added clutter. Linking too many words is not good style, it makes text hard to read. ChessPlayer

Article Introduction

I don't think it is right to first include Tillman's posthumous rank in the Army along with his name in the intro. In biography pages on Wikipedia, if I am not mistaken, simply the person's name is listed. See for example, George Patton, John Pershing, Ulysses S. Grant, and Erwin Rommel. None of these articles state the person's military rank, just the name, and then later give the rank. ChessPlayer 22:52, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Media coverage of his brother's eulogy and blog coverage in general

Supposedly they pulled their coverage of the funeral because of what his brother said about Pat not being religious, or the way he said it.

If someone would like to spend 20 minutes summarizing the blog coverage of all this, I think it would really add to this page.

Here's a good starting point: Google Search for pat+tillman+blog

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/04/SPG5K6FD091.DTL

Gonzalez article hostile to Tillman

I moved the in-text link to the "External links" section. The Gonzalez article is part of the story. Reporting it and linking to it are NPOV. If we remove that link because it, standing alone, is POV, then we'd have to remove pretty much all the other links, which are laudatory. I also de-wikified Gonzalez's name; at one point there was a stub for him, but I think there was a consensus that he didn't merit his own article. JamesMLane 00:16, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ted Rall's cartoon

I changed the word "genocidal" to "misled." The cartoon makes no mention of genocide; it suggests that Tillman was foolish to belief in the "War on Terror" (which Rall openly mocks) and blames the administration for deceiving Tillman. Regardless of whether Ted Rall is right or wrong in those assertions, "genocidal" has nothing to do with the cartoon and to use that word is decidedly POV. --Feitclub 01:10, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Um...Rall's cartoon depicts Tillman signing up to "kill Arabs". Sounds like an accusation of genocide to me. - Nunh-huh 01:22, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The point is he believes Tillman was being duped. And there's a big difference between wanting someone dead and being genocidal. --Feitclub 02:17, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

There's not a big difference between wanting someone dead because they're Arab and being genocidal....to me, anyway. your mileage may differ - Nunh-huh 03:40, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Having said that, I think your edit is appropriate. --Feitclub 02:19, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Photo Caption Incorrect?

I'm pretty sure that this is a photo of Tillman graduating from Ranger School, not from Army Basic.

ASOC assertion of enemy forces

In the Biography section, there are the following assertions, which are unaccompanied by any corroboration.

Army Special Operations Command, however, claims an exchange with hostile forces. They are correct.

Rather than just deleting this, I offer an interval for discussion and clarification.

use this info.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/25/MNGD7ETMNM1.DTL

Is it my imagination or did this happen?

Pat Tillman dies. The right wing make him into a Jesus 2.0 and the left had a "mixed" reaction to his death.

Then when we find out he:

• got killed by friendly fire,
• oposed the war in Iraq,
• was a Democrat,
• was going to vote for Kerry,
• was into Noam Chomsky.

Suddenly the left hails him as a martyr and the right either drops him faster than a burning dog turd or distances themselves from him and tries to suppress any mention of him ASAP.

stuff

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,121262,00.html http://www.tfp.org/TFPForum/Tendential_Revolution/tillmanstower.html http://www.theadventuresofchester.com/archives/2004/12/blogs_of_war_de.html

To Grazon

Look, you can't say things like "the right wing made Pat Tillman into a Martyr". Plenty of people on the left praised Tillman too, don't forget that. The word "martyr" is exaggerative and there's no reason to use it. You can't use phrases like "republican agenda". You can't claim that the right wing is trying to "promote ... Christianity" in an article - that is all your opinion. The rest of your addition is a bunch of random out of context quotes from some articles and message board posts. Why do the readers care what someone said on Free Republic? Last, you claim that "These people assumned that Tillman was conservative, right wing, a Republican, a Christian, a supporter of the Iraq war, a supporter of George Bush, and that he had been killed by enemy fire." It's your belief that they assumed these things - however, the columns you link to don't speculate about Tillman's political beliefs. Rhobite 03:51, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

How people feel about this is very important to portray in an article. We just need to find an encyclopedic way to portray those feelings. The editor's opinion cannot be assumed to represent the feelings of the whole world. At the very least, the opinion cited needs to be authoritative and include alternate views. In a best case scenario, we can cite a source that everyone agrees is NPOV. It isn't that we don't want your opinion represented, Grazon, its just that it needs to be done in an encyclopedic way. --Zephram Stark 14:36, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok I'll also give it a temperary title

grazon 20:37, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Could you please justify the inclusion of the section? If you won't discuss why you believe the article should have a bunch of random contextless quotes, the section will just be removed again. Rhobite 20:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm DEFINITELY not a Republican/right-winger, but that section is hardly encyclopaedic or NPOV, and the formatting is awful. I'd suggest NPOVing the mention of those quotes by at least putting them in some informative context (who said the quotes and when) and integrating them into the "Hostility towards Tillman" section, since those are responses to that hostility. Liontamer 21:06, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Calling a set of actions an Iconization is a conclusion that not everyone would agree with. If you are willing to take the time to edit this like an encyclopedia, you will succeed in getting your point across, but I'm sure you realize that an NPOV article can't have a conclusion as a title. --Zephram Stark 20:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm puzzled - how is "iconization" any better than "martyrdom"? They express the same POV, that the right wing embraced Tillman excessively. It's an equally poor section title. As Zephram says, it's expressing a conclusion as if it was a fact. Rhobite 20:51, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I thought it was better.

my bad.

grazon 21:00, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

RfC

I waded in here in response to the RFC for this article, and tried to make some improvements w.r.t. NPOV; also added important fact that a new investigation has been started. FRS 22:06, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Dear Rhobite

The "Controversial critisisms" section of the Pat Tillman article is incredibly unbalanced. It takes three swipes at the left wing, with nothing to balance them out. The third paragraph remarkably uses the word "responded" despite being the third blatant attack on the left. That's why I've been removing part of it. If you want to add some of Frank Rich's article, at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110605Z.shtml, that would bring balance to the section.

Not everything has to be balanced. There was a massive backlash to Rall's comic and Gonzalez's column.. we shouldn't pretend that these events didn't happen because we're afraid of presenting the left in a bad light. Feel free to improve it however you like, but don't just remove paragraphs with no edit summary and no justification. If you'd like to cover Frank Rich's opinion piece, go for it. However I just read Rich's piece and he doesn't really say anything new about the Tillman controversy, he just uses Tillman as an example of the Bush administration's tendency to play around with the truth. Rhobite 06:00, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

"Fox News" cite

I deleted "The fact that Tillman objected to the War in Iraq has now even been accepted by Foxnews. [2]" because it seemed irrelevant and not completely accurate. The link goes to a guest commentator's op-ed piece, and does not necessarliy reflect "Fox News." The opinions in the Op-ed piece don't add much to what is already in the "anti-war revelations" section of the article.--FRS 21:21, 2 December 2005 (UTC)