Talk:W. W. Herenton

Untitled

Black Moses is a reference to the Issac Hayes album recorded in Memphis, a joke conceivably alluded to in the cartoon.

Rlquall 03:11, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

White minority?

I took out the following because it needs to be revised. Why is most of the article talking about reaching out to Memphis white people? It seems biased and almost factually incorrect. I am white and I want the guy recalled.

Agreed. Most of the information here is opinion at best, if not an outright lie. It has no business in this article.

Agreed this is a biased opinion and is not backed with any evidence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Flywithjohn (talk • contribs) 22:41, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Herenton has in recent years been more accepted by Memphis' white minority, partly due to his outreach to many in that community. He has worked to assuage fears that his mayorality would somehow mean that whites were no longer welcome in Memphis, which was a notion spread by some of his detractors. He received a substantial minority of white support in his most recent mayoral race against a field of predominantly white opponents. (insert paragraph) Many feel that much of Herenton's appeal to whites is a result of his perceived (some would say very real) enmity with the powerful Ford political family. Many white Memphians feel that they can list which black political leaders are in the Ford camp and which are in Herenton's. Herenton was perceived by many as having hurt himself severely with his remarks made at an event honoring his inauguration to a fourth term in which he seemingly stated that no one present was worthy to fill his shoes and that God had made him mayor of Memphis; The Commercial Appeal responded with a cartoon of the mayor as Moses, bringing his commandments down from atop the Pyramid. Herenton's most recent controversies involve his replacement of the chief of police in August, 2004 and his attempt to hide his lover and their son from public view.

NPOV and cites

Memphis is not a fiscally sound city. And, Lewis vs. Tyson was not one of the biggest fights in boxing history.

The rest of the section is not cited, dubious at best. Each claim will have to be cited.

-A fiscally sound City government that has established a surplus and operates within budget annually, resulting in only two property tax increases in 12 years.

-Landing the Lewis vs. Tyson heavyweight championship fight in June 2002, one of the biggest fights in boxing history.

Also, I noticed you pulled the recall, failed to include the city charter rewrite, failed to include the forum garage investigations. Why weren't the Grizzles mentioned? Scribner 03:04, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I reverted the edits. The article needs to be expanded significantly, but we must adhere to WP:NPOV. · j·e·r·s·y·k·o talk · 03:06, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Criticism of Herenton

Feel free to add or edit this section. Any help will be appreciated. Please don't remove the section for lack of content. Myself or other editors will finish the section. Thanks.--Scribner 11:17, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

The critisims of Herenton are well documented and will remain in the article. Add a lead or rewrite the section but don't delete or hide factual information as being "contextless". Thanks. --Scribner 16:48, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

If the criticisms of Herenton are to remain in the article they must be sourced better, half of them link to dead pages with no article at all, and others do not support what they are citing. I am not at all opposed to a section detailing the criticisms, but it must be written better, and by this I mean use complete sentences and paragraph form. Man It's So Loud In Here (talk) 16:00, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with that position. The criticism needs to be sourced better and needs to be formulated in sentences as it is common practice on Wikipedia. doxTxob \ ^talk 00:42, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

POV Check?

I've looked at the article, it seems to be NPOV to me. Okay, so a lot of people keep adding POV material, but they keep getting reverted, so I don't see that a POV check is in order here.

The criticisms section might need some rewording, but these are all sourced criticisms of the man, and so are factual in nature (they really are criticisms made in the press).

Unless anybody objects, I say remove the POV-Check template. -- -- Otto 19:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The POV check is nothing more than another attempt to remove all criticism against herenton.Scribner 06:23, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Considering that nobody has come forward to explain why it's there, I've removed it and the tone tags. The tone throughout the article is basically factual in nature, with almost all of those facts cited. I also eliminated the two extra sections, as without more information they are just criticisms of the man. Feel free to turn those back into whole sections if you have more than a short paragraph to put in them. -- Otto 15:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

The tone of the criticism section is not encyclopedic. The criticisms presented are not even in sentence form. Per WP:TONE, Wikipedia articles are to be written in a formal tone and style. A list of criticisms without any paragraph structure surely does not comply with this guideline. I'm less concerned about POV, though frankly I think the language in the criticism section is a bit over the top. I'm saying this as someone who is NOT a Herenton fan--I just want this article to be as well-written as possible and for it to comply with Wikipedia guidelines and policy. Thus, I will re-add the tone/style template but not the POV-check template. · jersyko talk 15:43, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

If you need sources, the commercial appeal would be the place to go.--75.64.240.78 (talk) 02:08, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Rumors

If we include one rumor regarding Herenton, we need to include all rumors regarding Herenton...can't be done.Scribner (talk) 04:03, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I found a source and clarified this rumor. From the article I cited: "There are several options that I am looking at, some in the private sector, and there is one public-service opportunity that, under the right conditions, I would serve and that one is in the field of education ..." Herenton told The Commercial Appeal. "Education is where my passion is so I've got a number of options that I am going to consider." -- Otto 10:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Party

What's his political party and political faction (i.e. Liberal or Conservative, etc.)? Coffee4binky (talk) 23:05, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I think he is a democrat —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.177.8.229 (talk) 22:38, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

He is a democrat. Kyle1081 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:29, 14 January 2011 (UTC).

Contradiction?

In the "Biography" section, the following is stated: "He is the first African-American to be elected mayor of Memphis, but not Memphis' first African-American Mayor." This seems wrong, or am I just missing something? Kyle1081 (talk) 01:33, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

J.O. Patterson Jr. was technically the first African-American mayor of Memphis. He briefly served after Wyeth Chandler resigned in 1982, but he was not elected to that position. It fell to him per the line of succession, as he was head of the city council at the time. -- Otto (talk) 07:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV

I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:

This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:

1. There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
2. It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
3. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 15:29, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Biased Edits During the 2019 Election

I'm not especially knowledgeable when it comes to editing Wikipedia so I'm hesitant to make the necessary changes myself, but hopefully someone can have a look at the sweeping edits that we recently made. I think they very clearly represent a NPOV problem, and were likely made by an interested party with the intent to propagandize during an election. Theseus lost (talk) 22:25, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I removed most of the non-neutral language introduced in those pre-2019 election edits. I think that should be adequate to remove the neutrality tag. Bigrigg47 (talk) 18:00, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Since there's been no pushback on this (or any discussion at all), I'm going to go ahead and remove it. Bigrigg47 (talk) 01:21, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, this seems like they completely blanked the criticism in the run-up to the election. I haven't edited in a long time and feel uncomfortable editing the article as well. Also, the edit summaries for Blufftopshout seem suspiciously knowledgable of Wikipedia for an account that only has two edits, both of which are for this page. Blueworldrun (talk) 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Herenton elected by a prankster

Please note that a local Memphis “character” (Prince Mongo) with zero qualifications got his name on the ballot and many people voted for Mongo as a joke. THIS is how Herenton actually became mayor (by Mongo splitting the vote) 2600:1700:4FB8:700:BC9F:29DE:9231:E1EF (talk) 14:04, 4 October 2023 (UTC)