Talk:Dead cat strategy

Untitled

any idea on the origin of this phrase? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.75.100.200 (talk) 01:49, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

The examples for United States hold obvious bias. Neither is incorrect, but more should be included at least. 2601:191:8500:50E9:DCCD:2885:C2D4:BDCF (talk) 20:29, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Original research examples

@DeFacto: What WP:OR are you concerned about in the removed examples? One is a quote of Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar describing a statement of Johnson's in a given context as "throwing [a] dead cat", the other is a milder and somewhat weaselly "seen by some" which echoes the Irish Independent's "some critics believe" but could instead be attributed to Matt Potter of the Washington Post whose entire article is about Johnson's dead cats.

The descriptions of the events being distracted from could use a polish, but I'm not sure I see the original research. --Lord Belbury (talk) 17:54, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

The reason given in the edit notes was WP:BLP - this isn't a biography, and it's all sourced anyway. I have re-introduced it as the reasoning for removal is clearly spurious. (Hohum ^@) 18:26, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

@Hohum, BLP is very explicit about what it covers: "Material about living persons added to any Wikipedia page must be written with the greatest care and attention to verifiability, neutrality, and avoidance of original research".

It also makes it clear that (with my emphasis): "We must get the article right. Be very firm about the use of high-quality sources. All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by an inline citation to a reliable, published source. Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion. Users who persistently or egregiously violate this policy may be blocked from editing". -- DeFacto (talk). 18:40, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

WP:OR says: "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any source". For each example, we need to see at least one (and preferably more) reliable authoritative source about the dead cat strategy, describing it as prime example.

For the first, all I see are misrepresentations and allegations from opposition MPs which, given their job is to embarrass and criticise the government, carry little weight and cannot be relied on to be authoritative, being strung together to arrive at a conclusion (that this is an "example") not stated in any of them.

For the second, all I see are stories being spun (OR) and misrepresentations of the plan, followed by the, as you say, weaselly, allegations and personal opinions.

Per WP:BLP, stuff like this needs robust and reliable sourcing. -- DeFacto (talk). 18:33, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

What *exactly* is synthesised. What isn't reliable about the Independent, Washington Post, Guardian, or the BBC? The examples are of USAGE, not whether it's been fairly applied. All instances of it's usage are going to be critical, obviously. Also, please do not edit war. (Hohum ^@) 18:44, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

None of those sources (and it should be all of them if they're cited) was giving an authoritative description of what a "dead cat strategy" is, and giving these cases as examples. The synthesis is the cobbling together of bits and pieces from different sources to invent a scenario, and then drawing the conclusion, that that none of the individul sources makes, that the homemade scenario is an example of a "dead cat strategy". -- DeFacto (talk). 18:53, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Examples show usage, not definition. The examples given are clearly supported by their sources. Again, without generalising, what EXACTLY is being synthesised? (Hohum ^@) 18:58, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Examples need to be described as examples in sources that describe the strategy and provide these as examples of it. Read WP:SYNTH for more details. -- DeFacto (talk). 19:05, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Is being in a section specifically called "Examples" somehow misleading? Your inability to specifically point out *details* you disagree with is straining WP:AGF. (Hohum ^@) 19:06, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

If we label it as an example then we must be able to prove that it is an example. For very specific details of my argument see my posts in this thread. -- DeFacto (talk). 19:30, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

We have a source quoting Anas Sarwar saying "[Johnson] knew exactly what he was doing by throwing that dead cat strategy around the Jimmy Savile trial." Is DeFacto's concern that - in the absence of an aside from the press source explaining to the reader what a "dead cat strategy" is - Sarwar might have meant something else by it? --Lord Belbury (talk) 19:15, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

It may be Sarwar's opinion that it is a dead cat strategy, but that isn't enough to assert it as a fact that it is an example of one. We need an authoritative source on the dead cat strategy to assert it as an example, and then we can cite that. If Sarwar said Johnson was a hard left politician, would we use that as reliable support for giving Johnson as an example of a hard left politician? -- DeFacto (talk). 19:26, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

They're examples of the phrase's published usage, though - isn't that what the section is documenting? The other two paragraphs (where Boris Johnson accuses the EU of throwing a dead cat, and CNN and the BBC accuse Trump) would have the same problem otherwise. --Lord Belbury (talk) 19:45, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

The article is called 'Dead cat strategy', and the section in question is "Examples". The obvious meaning is examples of dead cat strategies.

I didn't see the other two being added, so hadn't read them. But having read them I'd say neither of those are verifiable as examples of the strategy either, so I'd support their removal too. -- DeFacto (talk). 19:59, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

So would renaming the section to something like "Usage of the term" resolve this? --Lord Belbury (talk) 20:06, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

How would we choose which usage example to include - by prevalence across all reliable sources? Or are there so few usage examples that we could include them all? No, I think exmples of use would fall foul of WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. -- DeFacto (talk). 20:33, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I think there are few enough sourced usage examples that we could include them all. In what way would including some examples of usage break WP:NOTTEXTBOOK? --Lord Belbury (talk) 20:49, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't, I thought I'd removed that mistake before publishing. Sorry, I've struck it out now. -- DeFacto (talk). 20:54, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

So would renaming the section to something like "Usage of the term" resolve this, if there were only four reliably sourced examples in the press, and we included all four of them? --Lord Belbury (talk) 08:39, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Please note my strikethrough of a previous comment. I was making my point badly while misunderstanding DeFacto. There is a difference between there being clearly supported cases of the accusation being made, and saying in wikipedia's voice that the strategy was actually used by an individual.

Clearly, there will be a scarcity of cases where anyone admits that they are using the strategy, and a preponderance of accusations. Including the accusations doesn't seem undue to me, as they are widespread. Clearly identifying them as accusations is important. "Examples of use of the term", etc. should be enough to make this clear. (Hohum ^@) 12:44, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

User:DeFacto has now added back the source where Boris Johnson accuses the EU of throwing a dead cat, after objecting to its use as an example above. Can we get a response to having an "Examples of use of the term" section to include the multiple sources where other people use it about Boris Johnson, including the deleted source entirely about his deployment of it? Reframing this article as a strategy that Johnson learned about from his campaign manager and was then able to catch his political opponents using is enormously misleading. --Lord Belbury (talk) 11:10, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

As far as I can find out, the Johnson EU example is the first time the term was used in the British press. Why wouldn't we include it in that context? I'm against a list of random examples as I state above, but the origin of the term is valid encyclopaedic content. There is no contradiction in that. -- DeFacto (talk). 11:18, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Given that he says "we must borrow from the rich and fruity vocabulary of Australian political analysis" in that article, Johnson did not coin the phrase himself and we shouldn't imply that he did.

Are you against a non-random curated list of examples of usage, titled as "examples of usage"? As has been said, there don't seem to be many sourced examples out there (maybe just the four that were there originally), and it seems reasonable to me to include all four of them to show that the phrase has been around a while, is still in use, and has also been used in the United States. --Lord Belbury (talk) 11:24, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

As I read it, the friend described the strategy with the analogy, and Johnson then used the short-hand 'dead cat' to refer to it. Many sources refer back to Johnson's use when describing it.

For the examples, I'm okay with an attributed RS list from a source describing and discussing the strategy and illustrating it with examples, but I'm totally against an OR/SYNTH list of examples cherry-picked by Wiki editors. -- DeFacto (talk). 13:06, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

"As you read it" would be original research, and seems to be wrong: Johnson literally writes in that source that he is borrowing the vocabulary from Australian politics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/04/15/boris-johnson-dead-cat-party-zelensky is a source describing and discussing the dead cat strategy as it relates to Johnson, and giving several examples (the article also mentions Trump, but gives no specific example); if that seems too anti-Johnson to quote alone, we have his comment about the EU debt crisis. Wikipedia can WP:ACHIEVE NPOV on an article without having to wait (perhaps forever) for a journalist to write one perfect, neutral list article that we can then copy line for line. --Lord Belbury (talk) 14:15, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not espousing OR, but that was what I thought it was saying. We need a clearer source to be sure. I wonder if it's got into any RS dictionaries yet.

I think that WP article is more an opinion/attack piece on Johnson rather than a technical piece about the 'dead cat' strategy, and anything from it probably belongs in Johnson's article, if anywhere, but not here. -- DeFacto (talk). 14:54, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

The fact that an IP today added a whole cloth example section beginning Sometimes the deadcat strategy is used, not only to distract when an argument is being lost (as above), but to avoid responsibility when evidence arises of harmful actions or misdeeds suggests that the article really does need to give some political context, rather than being a pure metaphor about throwing a cat at a dinner party, framed only in the vague "Let us suppose you are losing an argument" context that Johnson's Telegraph piece uses. It's harder for an unfamiliar reader to understand the concept without a real world example, and it would seem needlessly artificial to concoct one about a fictional politician when real-world examples are on the record.

Do you feel that an article giving three sourced examples (one of Johnson being accused of using a dead cat strategy, one of Trump, one of Johnson using it to attack the EU) would work here, User:DeFacto? --Lord Belbury (talk) 17:34, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

The lack of coverage in article of a wider treatment and the widespread reporting of the article subject is ridiculous. (Hohum ^@) 17:50, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

We need to find sources giving an in-depth analysis of 'dead cat' strategy and, if it provides examples, use them. We should not be choosing our own selection without a sourced basis for the selection. We need to attribute them as opinion too, and not assert the opinions that they are examples of 'dead cat' strategy as actual incidents of 'dead cat' strategy, especially as it is generally used as a derogatory term. -- DeFacto (talk). 21:55, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

We have strong sources for Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar using the term to describe Boris Johnson's Jimmy Savile remark, and this was written up as "Sarwar characterised Johnson's statement as" in the article, but you deleted that as "undue and OR". I don't understand what you're waiting for, do you want a journalist to write a "top five dead cat strategy examples" article for you, to reassure you that your Wikipedia colleagues haven't selected biased or trivial instances? Can the article contain no examples until that day? --Lord Belbury (talk) 06:22, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

If it isn't being described as an example in an article specifically about what deadcatting is, rather than in an article focussing on criticising Johnson, then it is surely OR and undue to include it. -- DeFacto (talk). 09:39, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

How it is original research (or as you say further above, synthesis) to quote an example of usage and frame it as such? Is it that Sarwar may have meant something else by "dead cat" and we're wrong to draw the connection to this article? I agree that the article shouldn't say something objective like "Boris Johnson used a dead cat strategy in February 2022 when...", but it never said that, it was quoting Sarwar.

This discussion feels like it's starting to go in circles, and would probably benefit from a clear RFC on whether an article about a pejorative political term can include non-dictionary examples. I'll put one up. --Lord Belbury (talk) 09:52, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Earlier Australian usage?

Hard to tell whether Johnson is being flippant when describing it as part of "the rich and fruity vocabulary of Australian political analysis", but there may be some earlier usage of the metaphor in Australian politics; this 2011 article quotes an anonymous member of the Liberal shadow cabinet saying "'What are we going to do about concerns about the number of Muslims?' He put it on the table like a dead cat."

Which may actually be Lynton Crosby again, since the dead-catter there is Scott Morrison, who I think Crosby was advising at the time. Even so, though, the phrase is being used by someone else, and it's not given enough context to tell us whether "dead cat" is established Australian political slang. --Lord Belbury (talk) 12:58, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

You'd think if it was in widespread use anywhere before Johnson started using it in his Telegraph article, it would be easy to find sources covering it. -- DeFacto (talk). 14:56, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

More on 'dead cat' strategy

Here's an interesting article about the term from Prospect Magazine in the run-up to the 2019 election: [1]. -- DeFacto (talk). 22:15, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps if we are to give examples, we should concentrate on successful distractions characterised as 'dead cat' - there are some mentioned in this 2015 article on the Guardian website about the unexpected Tory election win in 2015: [2].— Preceding unsigned comment added by DeFacto (talk • contribs) 22:26, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

I only see one example there, and it's rather oblique, Sam Delaney repeating the dead cat dinner party explanation and then saying "and that is exactly what happened" about the outcome of Fallon's speech, which reads more like a thoughtful comparison than Delaney committing to describing it as an intentional dead cat. This seems a rung below Matt Porter's Washington Post article about Boris Johnson, where we get a list of examples of what Porter considers to be dead cats. --Lord Belbury (talk) 07:02, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

The Prospect article, which is actually about 'deadcatting', and how the term became popular in journalism as pejorative, gives the examples of James Cleverley over a Sky interview, Jacob Rees Mogg over Grenfell victims, the PM on 'onanism'. As they are presented in this context, they are appropriate examples.

The Guardian article, again specifically about 'deadcatting' and Lynton Crosby's ideas, gives the example of how the Tory chances of winning the 2015 election were turned around following Michael Fallon's attack on Ed Milliband's Trident policy.

To comply with WP:VER, WP:OR and WP:DUE, examples need to be supported by sources in context of the subject of the Wiki article, and not as items from recent news on a different subject which just happen to use the subject of the Wiki article in passing, and pejoratively, when describing the other subject.

The refs I gave are just a couple of sources providing suitably sourced examples. -- DeFacto (talk). 11:24, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

The Prospect article is titled "Dear journalists: please stop calling everything a “dead cat”" and links to three press articles which don't use the term "dead cat", and which the writer doesn't think are dead cats. The point being made is that the writer considers them examples of the kind of thing that some unnamed journalists (we don't know who) are wrongly describing as dead cats - possibly she picked the three silliest examples she'd seen recently. It's a fine source for Charlotte Lydia Riley's opinion of the strategy, and it would be good to get some of that into the article, but it's a bad source for deciding which examples to use here. --Lord Belbury (talk) 11:48, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

RfC on examples

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Consensus is in favour of not including examples with the level of sourcing described. The arguments made in favour of this position, based on WP:Core content policies like WP:No original research (in particular WP:Synthesis) and WP:Neutral point of view (in particular WP:Due weight) are stronger than the arguments to the contrary.

The argument that it would be appropriate to include examples with a higher level of sourcing—specifically high-quality academic sources that are clearly discussing the topic—was made early in the discussion, and nobody objected to it (though nobody explicitly supported that specific suggestion, either). In combination with the argument that examples would be helpful in illustrating the concept to allow readers to understand the topic better, I find that there is a weak consensus in favour of including examples with this specific level of sourcing. Given the lack of thorough discussion on this point, this may need to be discussed further if objections are raised at a later point. TompaDompa (talk) 19:06, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

---

Should this article about a pejorative political strategy include examples of politicians being publicly accused of employing it, sourced to press articles where those statements were made? --Lord Belbury (talk) 09:56, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

• No, I think the selection of examples should comply with WP:OR and WP:DUE, and they should only be from references specifically discussing the 'dead cat' strategy, rather than from references about an alleged specific political use of the term.

Otherwise we can just cherry-pick our own favourite examples from the numerous examples of journalists using the term each time they need to attack a politician, with no apparent connection to the topic of this article other than the use of the term. -- DeFacto (talk). 11:38, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

• [Exclude.] Summoned by a bot. I agree with the comments above and don't think the article should include examples of politicians employing it. Comatmebro (talk)
• Exclude. My usual answer for "example lists" like these is that they have a huge risk of introducing WP:OR / WP:SYNTH in several ways (unclear selection criteria can give undue weight to certain aspects, and it can become an argument about the nature of the topic based on what gets included.) I would say that we should avoid an indiscriminate list; the only examples that should be mentioned are ones that are referenced in high-quality academic sources that are clearly discussing the topic, since that sets a clear (and high) bar for inclusion that avoids an indiscriminate or synth-y list while still allowing us to mention the most important examples (ie. ones that are key to understanding the topic or are part of how its academic understanding evolved, as opposed to "some talking head accused someone else of this once.") --Aquillion (talk) 03:32, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
• Omit - the discussion above illustrates the perils of an "example list" - that there is an inherent likelihood of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH as we just cherry-pick our own favourite examples from the numerous examples of journalists using the term each time they need to attack a politician, with no apparent connection to the topic of this article. The 'dead-cat' analogy is itself an example of a deflection/redirection strategy.Pincrete (talk) 09:21, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
• Include - I don't know why we wouldn't include several examples. I understand the "cherry-picking" concern, but we can avoid that by focusing on the most notable examples. I know this is an WP:OTHERSTUFF argument, but look at October surprise. NickCT (talk) 12:48, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Selecting which examples are more notable is where the cherrypicking would occur. The way to avoid it would be to let everything in. That, of course, has its own problems. — LlywelynII 16:18, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

• I would prefer a history section over an "example list." I would note that it would not be possible to abide by NPOV without the historical examples covered in WP:RS so my answer is I guess both yes and no... Yes this article should "include examples of politicians being publicly accused of employing it, sourced to press articles where those statements were made" but in the history section not as a dedicated list and not as some sort of exhaustive directory. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:36, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
• Exclude per Aquillon. With articles like this we need to distinguish between sources that are actually about the dead cat strategy and sources that merely happen to use the expression. --RaiderAspect (talk) 11:48, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
• Include(asterisk) with the others above. No, there shouldn't be a poorly curated partial laundry list now that American politics is being treated as bloodsport. Yes, the most important examples should be sourced and worked into the body of the article or a History section. Yes, it would also be helpful to have a complete laundry list somewhere on the internet. Wikipedia used to be a place for "List of..." articles but it seems to be out of favor these days. Maybe it could be hosted on a blog or political wikia somewhere. — LlywelynII 16:18, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
  
  Apologies. Exclude. I had gotten distracted by the discussion in some of the later posters. G-d no, politically-launched accusations of using the strategy shouldn't be laundry listed at all. The article currently suffers from too many anti-Tory media articles on Boris treated as though they were scholarly works discussing the practice. If press attacks are legitimate and can be reliably sourced, they deserve entry without any regard to the press attacks apart from the facts of the case. Examples should not required sourced use of 'dead cat' related to the behavior. (If being called a "dead cat" is the important criterion for being one, you're back to the problem being addressed here.) Reliably sourced use of a strategy that meets the article's sourced definition should qualify. This goes back at least as far as the Greeks and Romans, even if they weren't using Australian slang. It probably predates civilization. On the other hand, press articles that use the words "dead cat" but can't be reliably sourced as to have actually met the article's definition in point of fact shouldn't be included, unless the attacks themselves are so successful they deserve a separate section on unproven or false attacks related to the term. — LlywelynII 16:26, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
• One possible example could be included (besides an RS discussing a hypothetical or historical case): if something meaningfully connects Johnson himself, as the popularizer of the term, to an illustrative use of the term in practice, then it might be worth including. After a cursory search I only found one article which partially quotes anonymous MPs accusing Johnson of using a "dead cat". What I'd rather see however is a source with a fully quoted exchange involving the term, including Johnson's response. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:50, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
• Include a small number of clear examples to illustrate what the "throwing a dead cat on the dining room table" metaphor actually translates to in politics. The current usage section of "may be used to avoid responsibility or the repercussions of misconduct (wink wink Boris Johnson headline in footnote), has been used to win previous elections (click the footnote link and read the article to find out which party, when and how)" is needlessly opaque and doesn't help the reader understand the concept. I agree that an example list coat rack of all passing mentions would be bad. --Lord Belbury (talk) 11:37, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Merge to/from Wag the dog?

After the end of the #Origin section, the rest of the article should deal with actual examples of such behavior in practice. Such examples of behavior do not require the use of the term "dead cat" but they must involve proof (usually confession or legitimate historical concensus) that the action was a deliberate attempt at distraction.

Having said that, in what ways does the behavior described here differ from that already covered by the article Wag the dog? "Wag the dog" was originally military but is now broader "deliberate distraction for political ends". "Dead cat" was originally Boris but now broader "deliberate distraction for political ends". In what areas are they any different? That needs to be clearly explained in the phrasing of the leads of both articles or they should be combined and handled together. — LlywelynII 17:04, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

My reading would be that a dead cat is always something negative, thrown with the full expectation that political and press opponents will seize on it. The thrower anticipates having to weather some temporary bad publicity from it, but has weighed that up against the damage of whatever those opponents would be talking about otherwise. I don't think Clinton's missile strikes were made in that spirit, to draw opprobrium for their own sake from Republicans.

I'm not sure what "or important" is doing in the lead here. A politician breaking an important, positive story to distract from something else doesn't seem like a dead cat. --Lord Belbury (talk) 15:23, 19 May 2022 (UTC)