Talk:Dr. Joseph Merlino on sexuality, insanity, Freud, fetishes and apathy

It's my own view or perhaps my bad english, but i feel this article is very strange Jacques Divol 09:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

It's not an article, it's an interview with a famous psychiatrist/psychoanalyst who has a new book coming out on Freud. --David Shankbone 13:44, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Makes sense to me - and is rather in depth, which I like. Nice job David. Lyellin 15:30, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks :-) We covered a lot of ground. I probably need to make sure I get across that this perspective is from the w:psychoanalysis field. --David Shankbone 15:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

yes, you do a great job. it's my bad english :) Jacques Divol 13:25, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I did run across some typos, some grammatical problems, but I can't bring myself to touch an interview. Mainly, because I am of the opinion that what was said should be transcribed as true to every noise that comes out of each person. So I wouldn't want to try to correct anything without the source audio, and I think Mr. Shankbone should consider making that available to us. Superb interview, by the way, more deserving of digital immortality than much of wikinews articles past.

But now Wikinews is a totally new phenomenon, and every party in the interview is going to want to clean up all of their misstatements to avoid looking foolish. I don't think there are many people who can speak in perfect sentences in normal conversation, just listen to the glorious emperor of the U.S. It is my suggestion that when people do want to clarify what they wanted to convey in the interview, that they should be guided to add the clarification underneath their original response, clearly identifying themselves and saying something like, "What I meant to say was..." This to me, would be the best of both worlds, preserving the human aspect of imperfect communication, even the potentially embarrassing, possibly revealing "Freudian Slip," and at the same time offer readers the added bonus of what the answer would be if given time to reflect. - Zaz 14:11, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Response to Zaz regarding interview issues

It's true, I could use a good editor and self-editing is difficult, especially in a rush to do the interview, the laborious transcription (I now pay transcribers and I have spent somewhere near $1,000 so far), and then the clean-up and posting, and the rush to move on to the next interview. I'm suffering from a back-log right now of un-transcribed and unpublished conversations. There is a healthy amount of clean-up that the transcriptions undergo to improve their readability. For instance, if someone were to say this:

DS: Senator, what...could you tell me, perhaps, what you might have eaten yesterday, if you can remember...maybe for lunch.

Senator: I, uh, I was walking toward the supermarket...no, I'm sorry, what I meant to say is I was walking toward the deli for a, uh, um, ham on rye, was it a ham? Yes. Yes it was, um, ham.

Would actually be published to look like this:

DS: Senator, what did you eat for lunch yesterday?

Senator: I walked to the deli and I ate a ham on rye.

There are several reasons for this:

1. To improve readability.
2. Not to make anyone sound like a fool. People simply don't speak in complete thoughts, especially in an interview. When they are put on the spot.

Since I was a neophyte at interviews, I wasn't sure if this was correct, so I asked several known news people and interviewers and they said not only is it correct, but necessary for the reasons stated above.

You raise a good point regarding post-interview clean-up. My feeling is that if I agree, and the interviewee agree, then it is okay. It takes a meeting of the minds of both individuals involved in the interview to come to a consensus that they are not, in fact, changing the substance of what they said or trying to clarify post-interview controversial remarks they made. It can be a fine line. For instance this individual very likely would jump at the chance to edit that interview. There, I would step in and say, "Um...uh...no...I don't think...I, uh, want you to change your remarks." --David Shankbone 15:00, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

---

Back to David

Whoa, DNA daddy didn't just step in it, he slipped and got it all over him! Actually I read of him dropping that bomb immediately afterward, I was curious if he was going to produce some data, broadsiding the PC police. Apparently not, since he went straight for the apology. Guess he missed the whole Imus thing. He was on a hubris binge, recent interview had him saying that he owed his longevity to avoiding boring people.

But these chafe my sense of speech freedom enormously. Without thinking like these attack dogs, it takes me aback like the way mr.anon.IP zeroed in on my casual use of the word "dumping" back there in the BDSM talk. Having a slick one leverage petty connotations into an issue really points out to me how much these public figures dance in a minefield every time they open their mouths.

The difference between theory and experience: Never having attempted transcription of a raw interview, I couldn't appreciate just how sloppy they can get. Then posting the raw audio here publicly would likely chase off prospective subjects. In this light, I'll have to adjust my thinking on the purity of the frozen moments of speech, and allow myself license to correct the typo-type of errors and the few glaring plurality and other minor gaffs that catch my eye. I'm the last guy to be confused with an English major, but after reading a few million sentences without the benefit of Evelyn Wood the stumbles stick out. Leave the unflattering celebrity snapshots for the supermarket tabloids.

This would be more appropriate on your talk page, maybe elsewhere, but since we're here now, and very busy at that, just gotta get this outta me. Maybe it's an opponent reaction to my misery over the direction this country has been going, even before the new millenium's surprises. It's not like me to fall all over the floor for anything, but I've become this real zealot for Jimmy's Wonderful Wikies and then you come along, and the next thing you know, I'm running around the operation center, evangelizing the evangelicals and other selectively informed folks with the first page of your Wolfson interview, because the first five answers he gave you brought me instantly from sketchy sort-of-knew-abouts to crystal clear knowledge. Wiki-P was a "be careful what you wish for" problem for me, because I wanted to know everything, and then everything was finally placed in front of me. And here you demonstrate just how valuable the right question put to the right person can be. Co-workers catch me saying "wow" like Timothy Leary used to. I work with many middle-aged reasonably intelligent but conservative people who sometimes bring me down with their stubborn cynicism. My new trick: Read the comments of the Wikimedia contributors. Highly concentrated, altruistic humanistic hope - they can't live without it either, I usually can't take more than five or six pages. After 35 years of smoking, I finally found enough incentive to quit. - Zaz 12:39, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Re: to Zaz

Cleaning up the transcription is a courtesy I extend to all the interviewees, whether evangelical Sam Brownback (who said "Uh" and "um" a lot) or Augusten Burroughs (who switched thought mid-sentence a good deal). But sometimes I leave an "uh" or an "um" in if I think it puts into context a frame of mind or a stumble. It can be a challenge to do some of these. Two people whose politics I don't particularly care for, Tancredo and Brownback, I walked away from having more respect for Tancredo (he was incredibly forthright in the interview) and less for Brownback, who wanted to stick to his political script. That presents an interesting question, because I could have gone at Brownback, but I don't think that serves a useful purpose for Wikinews. If you look at the "Why would God not like gay people?" question, he deflected it and turned it into the hot button "Gay marriage" bugaboo. I let it slide...what am I going to do, "No, Senator, the question is WHY IS GOD BOTHERED BY GAY PEOPLE?! ANSWER IT!"

The point of these interviews is to explore a person a little more deeply, and if they don't want to be explored--as Brownback did not--then seasoned interviewees know how to wiggle out of a question. This is the reason they are so long. I don't have a particularly large readership in mind when I do these--they are there for people who want knowledge straight from the horse's mouth. I don't really care if one person doesn't like them, or the majority of people don't like them, because they are written solely for me. If the IP doesn't like them, he doesn't have to read them and he should instead stick to publications where the writers aren't volunteers. All of us on here are volunteers - this is our hobby; and either people like our particular hobbies, or they do not. If a person wanted to come on to Wikinews and only report about hate crimes against black people, they would be welcomed. Why not? If that's where their interest lies...we don't pay them, and we are happy for the content. It is bound to be interesting to someone. That's the same philosophy on Wikipedia. So, it might bother someone like the IP that I'm not writing what he wants written, or I'm not asking what he wants asked, but I'm not doing this for him or anybody else but myself. And if one other person finds the things I ask and the people I question to be interesting, then that alone makes it worth it to me. And what makes it worth it to me are bits like this from my two hour talk with Gay Talese (to be published soon):

DS: Has the war affected you as a person?

GT: I wish it had. The war hasn’t affect America as a person. The only ones affected are the 165,000 troops, relatives, kinfolk, cousins. That’s all.

DS: It hasn’t affected you then?

GT: I wish it had! It hasn’t. It hasn’t affected you either. It hasn’t affected anybody!

DS: It’s affected me.

GT: It’s affected you?

DS: Every single person I interview I ask about the war because I think it's important and it has affected me.

GT: Then you must have some relationship. Or you must have a human spirit unmatched since Billy Graham made his first speech. I mean you have to have a real conscience, social conscience, to care. Where are the protests coming out of the Ivy League or the University of Alabama? They’re not there because there’s no conscription. There should be conscription. There should be a draft. There should be. Everybody should serve.

DS: That’s what Charles Rangel says.

GT: He’s the only voice in Congress that ever said that and he said it five years ago. I don’t know of any other voice. I am not aware of another member of the Congress who said what Rangel said. Not one. Certainly not these candidates, Clinton and the rest of them. Because why? Because they know it would stop the war in an hour. Because then we would have involvement. Right now what’s the involvement? The ridiculous stickers, ‘Support Your Troops’ on the back of an SUV? The cost of gas matters not at all. Nobody sacrifices.

DS: That’s the only thing that does seem to motivate people to be against the war is to be paying more at the gas pump.

GT: They don’t care. Don’t care. There’s no sacrifice. Americans are unaffected, except those in the military or related to military people, doesn’t matter… I go out. I mean, yes you can have conversations at dinner parties about this, but it’s very political. It’s about whether McCain says this or Hillary says this and what’s the position of somebody in the defense department. That’s all bullshit. Really nobody cares.

DS: Does it bother you that there’s a lack of outrage?

GT: Yes it does. It does bother me. And it does bother me that the poor people who need money join the National Guard Reserves because they needed that money or they want to go to college. What most bothers me are the college students – the worst generation is what I call them. These college students are the worst and I’ve been to a lot of campuses. I taught last year at USC. I always go to USC in the spring in April every year. I go for a week or so. And I hang around. Across from the campus, there’s a motel I stay in. College students are always hanging around there. And I was, this year, at the University of Pennsylvania and I was at the University of Alabama, and I’ve been to a number of campuses this year and nobody cares about this war.

--David Shankbone 14:51, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

OR?

If so it needs the tags...

It has an interview tag, that carries the OR label on it. I could put the OR tag in addition to the interview, but it seems like the interview tag itself takes care of the issue. --David Shankbone 17:10, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Ping

Ping

Chris Crocker image

File:Pic20071127 1.jpg

Image:Chris Crocker.JPG was removed from Commons, so I suggest we use this image instead. ~Planoneck~ 02:36, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Generally, this would be disallowed as the new image is newer than the article. In this case, I don't see the harm as it is an interview, however, I doubt that the substitution will succeed. --SVTCobra 02:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I am removing the {{editprotected}} tag as the image suggested was after the publication date of this article. --SVTCobra 01:56, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

FAC

This article is a featured article.
It is considered one of the best works of the Wikinews community.
See the archived discussion.

Deserving, methinks. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:19, 9 September 2013 (UTC)