Talk:Everett Dirksen

Misattributed quote

This Dirksen quotation, considered above to be misattributed, is not. I actually heard the Senator say those words in his deliberate, sonorous voice, in the 1960s, on a television news interview, in Chicago. Whether it was a local news program or the national news I do not recall. It's quite possible that transcripts do not exist. It's also possible that the Dirksen Congressional Research Center just hasn't investigated those sources. But say it he did! One place where a patient researcher might be able to find the source is here: http://archives.museum.tv/login?from=archives —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.150.186.45 (talk • contribs) on March 16, 2009 at 15.48 (UTC)

I am old enough and yet young enough to remember seeing Sen. Dirksen saying, "A billion here, two billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money," or something quite close to it, on live TV. I find it hard to believe that nobody can find a copy of that or some other instance of his saying this, as he was known to have said it on more than one occasion. Further, deleting a WikiQuote article on Sen. Dirksen, one of the most quotable members the U.S. Senate has ever been graced by, is to me one of the more absurd acts of the Wiki-world.

Unsourced

Published sources should be provided before moving these back into the article

• Some of my friends support the measure, and some of my friends oppose it. I support my friends.
  • Answering a question about a controversial senate bill. Quoted on a political talk show on WBEZ FM in Chicago. [1]

"Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican"

I heard this attributed to Dirksen in the '70s, before it was attributed to Reagan.69.122.158.213 01:57, 28 July 2011 (UTC)captcrisis

"Losers Never Forget" Caption Under Picture Unrelated to Subject of Article, Potentially Tendentious

These graphics and their captions

The winners never remember...

The losers never forget.

are unrelated to the subject of this article.

Dirksen's quote

"When I face an issue of great import that cleaves both constituents and colleagues, I always take the same approach. I engage in deep deliberation and quiet contemplation. I wait to the last available minute and then I always vote with the losers. Because, my friend, the winners never remember and the losers never forget."

would have had him voting against the Civil Rights Act if the remark were related in any way to the North, the South, or the American Civil War. The text of the article clearly says Dirksen voted with the winners on that bill, so these photographs have no relevance that way to the quote "the winners never remember and the losers never forget".

The South didn't "lose" by enactment of the Civil Rights Act - the injustices African-Americans and other minorities faced and still face required a legislative remedy - for the good of all Americans, throughout the United States of America. Dirksen and others worked hard to make that remedy the law of the land - for everyone.

Racial discrimination, sadly, exists throughout the United States, not just in the South. The entire nation needed the corrective of the Civil Rights Act - not just the former Confederate states.

In the 1970s, years after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, National Guard troops were required to keep the peace during integration of public schools in Massachusetts, and school buses were burned in Michigan in protest of integration there. These are just examples of not just racial injustice, but violent racial injustice which didn't happen in the South.

So the picture of the Daughters of the Confederacy monument in Arlington National Cemetery with the caption "Losers never forget" is unrelated to the subject of the article. That caption under that picture could also be construed as tendentious editing. Again, there's no relevance to Dirksen's quote "the winners never remember and the losers never forget" there.

I propose we delete both those pictures and their captions as unnecessary to the article. They don't actually reflect anything Dirksen did or said. In fact, the only thing they do is push POV, when this project's ethic ought to be NPOV. Vfrickey (talk) 17:15, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

No comment, so far, and no reason not to delete those photos and their captions. We're here to inform, not push factional disputes. Vfrickey (talk) 23:49, 8 November 2017 (UTC)