Talk:Rick Mercer

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Contents

[edit] Is Rick Mercer Gay?

OK, Rick Mercer is Gay??--156.34.218.109 17:08, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes. See here. Do not revert this again. Bearcat 09:52, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
So, what does the article you cite mean? Does it mean that Mercer admitted being gay? That is your interpretation. That is not how I interpret it. I read that the author of a gap gossip column, in an obscure weekly asked Mercer about being gay -- and that Mercer declined to comment on his gender preference. To save other readers the trouble, I have clipped the pertinent package:
I asked him if his (gay) sexuality and personal life help shape and define his work. But a pissed-off Mercer, the man famous for skewering Canadian politicians for being evasive, disingenuous or just plain stupid, lost it and snapped, “I don’t talk about how I vote, about my family or my personal life. As part of my job I stand up but I am always leery of saying, ‘This is my position. I’m not a politician.’”
I repeat, this is not an admission that he is gay. You could have written something like:
In the winter of 2004 Richard Burnett, decided to "out" Mercer. Burnett, the writer of a gay gossip column in an obscure Edmonton entertainment weekly newspaper, wrote about asking Mercer to comment on how being gay affected his work. Mercer declined to talk about his sexuality.
The Burnett column is not proof Mercer is gay. It does not contain an admission that he was gay. -- Geo Swan 12:18, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)
My apologies for not reading the link closely enough; clearly it predates his actual formal coming out (which did happen). Xtra! notes it here, Rabble notes it here (19th post down), the original "outing" occurred in the Globe and Mail article "Sly Mr. Nice Guy" (though unfortunately only available in the paid archive), and this Maclean's article contains the following quote:
There has already been a breach in the wall that Mercer has so painstakingly built between his public and private life. A recent Globe and Mail feature put his homosexuality on the record. Mercer doesn't exactly bristle when the subject is raised, but it's clear that he was none too pleased. "I don't view it as an outing -- my personal life is my personal life -- but there's nothing in my personal life that my friends and family aren't privy to," he says. His long-standing romantic and professional partnership with Lunz is not a secret, but something he chooses not to discuss publicly.
("Lunz" = Gerald Lunz, one of the producers of 22 Minutes and Monday Report.) Bearcat 21:44, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Organising the article into categories

It seems to me that the article should be organised into parts, rather than one continuous body of text. Iotha 05:03, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] There is a really good in-depth article in "Toronto Life" magazine

"The Quality of Mercer" http://www.torontolife.com/magazine/index.cfm?listing_id=47

The article is now longer available. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.51.164.176 (talk) 02:40, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed unneccesary reference to homosexuality.

I felt that it was unneccesary to have reference to Mr. Mercer's sexuality in the first sentence of the article. It is irrelevant nearly everything else in the article. Unless of course, you want to put heterosexual at the beginning of every article about a straight man.

For the record, it was added to the first paragraph by an anonymous contributor about an hour before you reverted it. I agree, in the first paragraph it's simply gratuitous — and the article does already discuss the topic in a more appropriate way later on (i.e. it doesn't need more than one brief paragraph). Bearcat 09:34, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why is Brennan Mercer featured so prominantly in this non-Brennan Mercer article?

Why does the first paragraph of this article have two sentences devoted (and a large picture) devoted to Rick Mercer's nephew? This isn't relevant I don't think - I've removed it. Cyrie

For the record, it was added by an anonymous contributor less than an hour before you removed it. Good job; you're right, it's entirely irrelevant. (And don't think I haven't noticed the irony that I made almost exactly the same comment less than a month ago in response to a different situation one subsection up.) Bearcat 03:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

so, who cares if rick mercer is gay he's still a very funny guy. If he is gay it won't make me stop watching his show. chelsea

[edit] ==Height?==

I understand that Rick Mercer is really short -- although exactly how short I don't know, somewhere around 5'5" or so I think. This should be documented in the article somewhere. --70.48.68.178 03:50, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sexuality and WP:BLP

(Bearcat's post moved to here from my talkpage -- LW)

"Relevant to the subject's notability" is not the defining standard by which we include or exclude references to a notable person's sexuality in a Wikipedia article. The sole standard is "this information exists on the public record". Bearcat 23:25, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to see where anything says that sexuality should be an exception to WP:BLP, which is one of Wikipedia's strongest rules. Meanwhile, I've trimmed the entry to its encyclopedic core. -- Lonewolf BC 00:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
The section in question is in no way a BLP violation. BLP prohibits unsourced rumours; it does not prohibit discussion of facts which a person has publicly acknowledged about themselves. Bearcat 00:17, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
BLP goes well beyond forbidding the inclusion of unsourced rumours. Moreover, this putative fact was not even referenced when I deleted it twice. -- Lonewolf BC 00:44, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
You can believe whatever you want about BLP, but it most certainly does not prohibit mentioning that a celebrity is gay if the celebrity themselves has come out as gay. It would prohibit the discussion of unsourced rumours about a subject's sexuality (e.g. Bill Graham), but it does not prohibit discussion of sexuality if the subject has openly acknowledged their own sexuality. As well, sexuality does not have to have special relevance to the person's notability to merit encyclopedic mention; all it requires is that the fact is documented on the public record. And incidentally, we do not describe people as "homosexual"; that's a clinical description, not an identity label. Bearcat 00:49, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
  1. It does not constitute a WP:BLP violation to note the sexuality of a person who has openly acknowledged themselves as being LGBT. It would be a BLP violation to note rumours about his sexuality which he had not publicly acknowledged — but it is not a BLP violation to include a fact that he has chosen to make public about himself. A source in which he directly discusses the matter of his sexuality is provided in the article, meaning that the information is not unsourced.
  2. A person's sexuality does not have to have some sort of special relevance to their notability to be included in a Wikipedia article. If the information exists on the public record, that is all that's required.

As the rationale given for removing the information has thus far been entirely based on distortions of Wikipedia policy, as an administrator I will have to treat any further removal of the sexuality section as pure and simple vandalism, and act accordingly per our vandalism policy. Bearcat 00:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Deleting it for being unreferenced was in no way a distortion of Wikipedia policy. By contrast, your saying that "the rationale...has thus far been based entirely on distortions of Wikipedia policy" is a distortion -- and uncivil. Further, it is not clear from the reference provided that Mercer has "openly acknowledged" being homosexual. It appears that the Globe and Mail printed such a thing, and that Mercer has not denied it, but the information at hand points away from his having "outed himself". -- Lonewolf BC 00:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
A reference was provided when the information was originally added; I know this because I added that reference personally. It appears that somebody removed the reference at some point later on. That's neither my responsibility nor my problem. And as for his own outness, he has an interview in the current issue of fab in which he discusses his sexual orientation; somebody has already added that as an external link as well. Bearcat 00:56, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
What matters is that there was no reference when I removed the material for being unreferenced. And when material is removed, on grounds of BLP, for being unreferenced, it is your responsibility to provide a reference before putting it back, which initially you did not. Perhaps you simply overlooked that the reference you had once given had since disappeared, but it certainly was not up to me to dig through the article's history to see if there had formerly been a reference. So again, your talk of "distortion" on my part is quite unwarranted and less than civil. In fact your whole tone -- though I may be misreading you -- seems needlessly combative and vehement. Please try to be more matter-of-fact. -- Lonewolf BC 01:37, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm responsible for how I intend my tone to come across, not for your choice of how to perceive it. Bearcat 01:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't want to get into a philosphical tangent about how communication works, but that's not exactly the way it does. You are responsible for how your tone comes across to a reasonable person. I'm telling you, as a reasonable person, that it is coming across as combative and vehement -- and not because I wish that it should, but because of the text you have chosen to post. If you intend otherwise, you should take that perception into consideration. At the same time, if your intent in otherwise (is it?) then it is incumbent on me to take that into account. The same things apply in the other direction, of course. -- Lonewolf BC 02:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Please note that Wikipedia:Naming conventions (identity) clearly states that people are to be described as gay, not as homosexual, in articles. Guidelines are binding as policy unless there's a specific reason to override them in a particular case — if Rick Mercer personally preferred the label "homosexual" over "gay", that would be a valid reason. An individual Wikipedia editor's preference for "homosexual" over "gay", however, is not a valid reason to override the guideline. Bearcat 18:15, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Where's Made in Canada?

I find it shocking that there's no mention of Mercer's other show, Made in Canada. He was the creator and star, it ran for five seasons, and it was just a darn good show. Mark (talk) 17:45, 19 November 2007 (UTC)