Talk:Harry Demopoulos

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]

Re:Disputed neutrality. What facts are being disputed as not neutral? Ya must help me here.

Re: Citations: Provided, Will provide more..

[edit] Doris Duke Death

Did partial revert. The lawsuit initiated by Demopoulos was what finally revealed the facts of Doris Duke's death. This is not insignificant. Also, I fail to see how directly quoting sworn testimony somehow violates NPOV. Facts is facts. BTW, Dr Demopolous is a pathologist and presumably knows a lot about murder.Pproctor 00:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The bold statement the butler did it was POV and nonencyclopedic. (Was he tried and convicted of murder?) Maybe you should add something similar to your second sentence above to the last paragraph in order to make the significance of the trial more clear. Right now (and this could be partially because of my edit--I don't know) it isn't clear that Demopoulos initiated the lawsuit, so it just seems like extra detail about the trial that is unnecessary in light of the relative thinness of the article as a whole.

"The Butler Did it" is a classic folk expression in the US, arising from the mystery novel tradition. Rather than sensational, I was trying to be funny. This is sometimes a mistake on Wikipedia, where people come from all sorts of cultural backgrounds. Possibly, you never heard the expression. In fact, the criminal case went nowhere because "The Butler" died before things went further. Anyway, I concede your point and did not revert this part.Pproctor 00:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, that last paragraph is taken in whole from the cited source, but is not put in quotes correctly. It should just be rewritten instead of having it as a completely quoted paragraph at the end of the article.

From hard experience, I often use direct quotes just so there is no question about that the source (here, sworn testimony) says.Pproctor 00:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Understand that I came to this article from a position of complete neutrality, having never heard of any of these people except Doris Duke. I am merely trying to make sense of an article that seemed to be going on a sensational tangent. --emw 03:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

No sensationalism, just an element of irony and an attempt at levity. This time, really, truly, sworn testimony does suggest "The butler did it". I.e, murdered Doris Duke. But the main point with respect to Harry Demopoulos is that it was his efforts that uncovered this. For that alone, Dr Demopoulos is "notable".Pproctor 00:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Addendum: A search on Google gives about 94,700 returns for "The Butler Did It". Google answers has an interesting article of the origin of the phrase. This article states: "According to the most mystery novel fans, the originator of the phrase "the butler did it" is Mary Roberts Rinehart. She first used the phrase in her plays 'The Bat' which were base on the novel "The Circular staircase" ".

Significantly, the phrase the butler did it here on wikipedia goes directly to her bio. I may reintroduce the term in this article with this link so my meaning is clearer. Pproctor 00:49, 3 May 2007 (UTC)