User:Will Beback/Saga of Sexy Sadie

The saga of "Sexy Sadie"

"Sexy Sadie", which appears on the White Album, was written by John Lennon in response to his belief that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had made passes at Mia Farrow and other women, which precipitated the sudden departure of Lennon and George Harrison from the Maharishi's ashram and the end of the Beatles' short-but-famous connection to their guru. The incident and the song are well known to anyone familiar with either party. For those who don't recall the song, here's a Youtube version.[1] The song was originally titled "Maharishi", but the title and every instance of "Mahairishi" in the lyrics were changed to "Sexy Sadie" at Harrison's request. Obviously, members of the movement are inclined to downplay the incident despite its fame and importance.

The first deletion I see was in 2005.[2] In 2006, mention of the song was repeatedly deleted by a TMer in the Netherlands, Peterklutz/85.30.186.206.[3][4] Added by by various users, including Woohookitty. It was deleted by Maharishi International Publications Department in February 2007.[5][6] In March 2007 it was deleted by Vijayante.[7] Later in 2007 Olive also reduced the coverage of the overall incident and removed sources.[8] In this edit Olive deleted it with a misleading edit summary.[9]

In February 2008, Nandesuka added a brief, well-sourced mention of the song to the Maharishi bio.[10] Littleolive oil removed it 17 minutes later, with the edit summary "moving to 'talk' for discussion, and until reference can be checked".[11] It was restored about an hour later by an anon.[12] Olive deleted it again the next day with an edit summary that didn't mention the deletion, "using direct quote from new source for accuracy and replacing older unsourced material".[13] Nandesuka restored it several hours later.[14] Olive then deleted the short quoted lyrics.[15] She removed mention of Mia Farrow.[16] TimidGuy also removed material.[17] There were several more edits which minimized the incident, or increased the space spent disputing the events

On the talk page there was a 5000-word, ten-day discussion between Nandesuka, Geogre, Olive, and Timidguy in which the latter two argued against its inclusion, but eventually acquiesced.[18]

In October 2009, Bigweeboy drafted a revision of the section on the Beatles in a personal sandbox. The draft omitted the song, added a very obscure, never-recorded song in its place, and provided an obviously unbalanced account of the incident which devoted more space to denying that it had happened than to explaining the basic events. Bigweeboy only gave a short, general explanation for the edit: that the content was too long. One other TM editors, Keithbob, approved of the changes but no one else commented so Bigweeboy put in his draft. I had not been paying much attention to the biography at that time and didn't realize the significance of the song or notice the deletion, but months later I was reading several obituaries which mentioned it and so I looked to see our treatment and was surprised to find it wasn't included at all. When I asked about it on the article talk page the TM editors seemed to think it was unimportant. Bigweeboy defended the process but not the outcome. Olive called the addition of the song "superfluous", said it was unimportant because the Maharishi never wrote about the Beatles, and said that we should discuss it throughly and get agreement by all parties before re-adding it. Kbob said there was no ground for complaint over its deletion. Thread

A short mention of "Sexy Sadie" is now restored, after another 5000-word, twelve-day discussion. Based on four successive waves of TM editors deleting the same core material at one year intervals, it's plausible that present and future TM editors will support and cause its removal once again, and that it'll require further 5000-word discussions to get it back.

Update: Kbob has just argued that Prudence Farrow, who's known only for having been an inspiration another Beatles song, is notable enough for an article. See Talk:Prudence Farrow#Notability.