Talk:Ted Gold
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Is it just me or does this article seem to be full of POV statements? There needs to be citation as well, as well as this it seems to me to be poorly written. --Razol2 14:50, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
So go ahead and rewrite and re-edit it then. I'm not sure who wrote the original text but I believe you have permission -- Milo99 22:59, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I would really like to rewrite it but I'm afraid that I would have to cut literally 3/4 of the text. In addition to this I checked in my Uni's library, nothing. I checked about 6 online journals, nothing. I have no doubt that this guy exists and that he was part of the Weathermen but as to everything else, well, it might as well be pulp fiction.
I don't want to destroy what has obviously been a lot of work for someone, but there just isn't enough accessible scholarship to make a decent article. --Razol2 06:39, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Comment on above:
Ted Gold certainly did exist and was a leader of the SDS at Columbia in the late 1960's.
I went to Columbia, lived in the same dorm as Ted did and knew him slightly. While I can't verify the entry's facts personally, the article sounds plausible enough given my (and every other student's) knowledge at the time. It sounds like it could have been a sort of oral history project written by people actually in the group, or is a chapter in someone's upcoming book. It may or may not be reliable as far as it goes.
The problem in my view is the entry's neutrality, not whether the details are correct. It seems almost a eulogy, and leaves a lot out. From what little contact and political discussion I had with him, I felt Ted was seriously out of touch with the mood of the country as were Rudd and many others in SDS. This led them to make foolish decisions. While they may have learned decision from their role, they didn't (IMO) learn much about the thinking of most of the population, let alone people overseas, and appeared in fact, impervious to input about this. The result is sad history.
It is no more than my personal perception, but a significant fact glossed over in the article is that, one suspects, a lot of the radical response to the war among Columbia students during the period can probably be attributed to a preconscious and conscious fear of the draft (a virtual emotional contagion at the time) rather than a more profound committment to leftist principles, though there was quite a lot of being in denial about this, since the middle class using its power in a panic to shift the costs of serving in the army onto the more vulnerable members of society was not a very palatable reality. Ironically, considering sociology was his major, Gold seemed, more than most students, to be blind to more subtle realities, and perhaps this enabled him to live in a more certain world and in turn made him comfortable to assume the role of quasi-firebrand leader. It worked for a brief moment among a segment of Columbia students, but outside campus, as far as I know, the Weathermen were a complete fizzle, attracting no significant support.
I think that rather than making major cuts in the article, the solution is to add to it, striving for what one admits is an ultimately unattainable neutrality, trying to fill out the picture of Ted Gold and his Columbia context more fully before the information is lost with the death or near-senility of the people who were there. It may have to be oral history, with all the problems this brings, but should this be fatal? Perhaps Wikipedia needs to handle this situation more systematically, encouraging diversity with a category of pages marked "participant recollections" which allow POV input. I feel the information is worth preserving as part of an encylopedia. But with the current entry as it stands, why the subsequent events such as the the collapse of the Weathermen, happened as they did will be mysterious to a reader. The disconnect can perhaps be partially bridged by welcoming other perceptions of what happened.
P.S. for more documentation try the archives of the New York Times (www.nyt.com), the Columbia Spectator, the student newspaper at Columbia University, and ask the Columbiana Room at Low Library, Columbia University for guidance and access to their collection. One imagines the University must have quite a lot of information on Gold.
From ajwdct: I am very disappointed that many of my changes were deleted by someone who thinks they are the enforcer/ traffic cop/ owner of Ted Gold's bio. Teddy (as he was known in early years) was my best friend at Joan of Arc Jr High School from 1959-1961. All I wrote about his early years was deleted. Very disappointed! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.131.21.9 (talk) 01:39, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
FurnaldHall 13:06, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
hey FurnaldHall i really enjoyed what you wrote here, i'd love to read your POV on the weathermen and that time period. as for the piece itself, it does seem like it was written from a personal view rather than a researched one. hopefully people who read it will also read this page. -Lennyzelig
