Talk:Dan Johnson (Kentucky politician)

Sources

The Kentucky Center for Public Reporting - a creation of Louisville Public Media recently published the results of their detailed investigation into Johnson; I feel this is probably something we should use as a source. DS (talk) 04:57, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

It has been a source since I created the article. Bueller 007 (talk) 05:29, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

They look like a partisan outfit, so using it should be cautioned. Chris Troutman (talk) 10:17, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

@Chris troutman:, @Bueller 007:, @DragonflySixtyseven:, @Neutrality:, The KCPR exhaustively sourced their articles, spent a considerable amount of time researching them, which precipitated the calls for resignations of four legislative alleged sexual assailants and ultimately the suicide of alleged "PTSD sufferer" "Bishop" Johnson. It's a spinoff of Louisville Public Media. Some of those accused have admitted their behavior, I believe. I would suggest at this point that the "Stub" classification be removed, and that future edits to the article be restricted to autoconfirmed users, as some of the IP editors are little more than graffiti artists. One hundred twenty-five edits have been made since Bueller 007 authored the article two days ago, before the suicide. Activist (talk) 19:41, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

@Activist: If you want the article protected, feel free to apply at WP:RFPP. Please excuse me for not taking the word of an editor named "Activist" about a source's neutrality. I stand by my comments. While their reportage may have been on the money, I would hope we can find corroborating accounts in the following weeks and months. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:12, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Actually I semi-protected the article an hour or so ago - because of some BLP violations. --MelanieN (talk) 20:41, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

@Chris troutman:, @Bueller 007:, @DragonflySixtyseven:, @Neutrality:, @MelanieN:, Forgive me for not deferring to the esteemed wisdom of some renowned personage entitled "Chris," or "troutman" (a nod to Richard Brautigan's protagonist, perhaps?), but neither the Lexington Herald nor the Louisville Courier-Journal seemed to share your suspicions about the quality of the reportage from the KY CPR. What do they know, anyway? Someone else might have thought a self-inflicted bullet through the brain was conclusive, Vincent Foster notwithstanding. Here's something from a less august source who happened to weigh in on the issue: Activist (talk) 20:48, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

@Activist: Yes, your comment about my name is very funny. It never gets old. Actually the name Trautmann comes from south of Darmstadt and refers to followers of Thrúd. Oddly, Richard Brautigan, like Dan Johnson, died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. People kill themselves every day and I don't know why they do so. Mental illness might have been involved. I wouldn't assume the subject killed himself because of what the papers were saying. I'd prefer to see more reporting. I'm not saying KY CPR is necessarily wrong; they just don't seem to be friendly to GOP politicians, which may bring their truthiness into question. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:10, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

I would not accept as a neutral, reliable source anything whose subtitle is "A Kentucky preacher-turned-politician's web of lies".[1] Sorry. If their information is valid, it will be repeated by more conventional Reliable Sources. --MelanieN (talk) 21:55, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

References

December 2017

As this is a wiki-page, the article must stick to the facts. The facts are that his dead body was found and it is suspected to be a suicide. The fact is that this man had a criminal record and a history for making dubious claims. There is no evidence to support his claims that he set up a morgue near ground zero on 9/11, and there would be city, federal and state listings of such a thing. So based on that, we can not presume that his claims of 9/11 based ptsd is also true, though he may have had ptsd from some other event, nor has he truthfuly recounted any narrative around 9/11 that can be factually linked to PTSD. The facts are that this man is dead, he had a criminal record and a recent allegation of criminal conduct, his suicide note blamed 9/11, but due to his own bad behavior a great many reasonable adults will believe he took his life to escape justice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:147:C002:D83A:C4CC:B871:1603:18D (talk) 21:29, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Two days ago, I read the entire report, read the references, reviewed the documents posted at the KY CPR, watched the 45 minute video of Johnson's response to the press from the pulpit the day before his suicide and read coverage by regional newspapers regarding the reception of the report. None of the latter had any problem with it. The KY CPR is an organization whose operations are a remarkable model of transparency. It broadcasts on three stations in Louisville, gets 91% of its funding locally, and gets 5% of its funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). After it received a tip from a reliable source, in the next seven months its reporters conducted over 100 interviews in two states including with relatives, friends of the subject, the police, victims, even the "Pope's" ex-girl friend from 30-odd years ago, and reviewed over 1,000 documents and gave Johnson repeated opportunities to respond to their findings which he declined. His response was to threaten them and to tell them they could not be present in a public place. He blamed the report on a plot by "NPR" and out of state interests. The Center also solicited and received financial assistance for the investigation from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, which like the CPB has been around for nearly a half century. This investigation was done by two accomplished journalists, one of whom has been a Pulitzer finalist three times. To entirely dismiss this extraordinary example of extremely professional and exhaustive reporting solely on the basis of a dislike for the subtitle of the article is, in my opinion, if it is not just an inappropriate joke, nothing less than imperious irresponsibility. The report's publication also apparently caused three other state legislators to be outed for unethical behavior. Activist (talk) 13:40, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Recent reversions

@Activist: I'd like to discuss these reversions [2] [3]. Regarding Johnson's use of the title "bishop", I don't see the need to include "self-styled". While the KyCIR article may refer to him as "self-styled", most others I've seen (including The New York Times) simply present the title with no qualification. I took your rather direct suggestion to look up the word bishop in the dictionary. One possible definition is "a spiritual supervisor, overseer, or the like". Unquestionably, the people in Johnson's church saw him in this light. He also seemed to function as what I would call the "pastor" of the church, but his church may call it a bishop instead. If he were a member of a denomination where bishop is a formal office – like Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy – the qualifier would be warranted, but in an apparently self-governing, nondenominational church, I think they are entitled to bestow that designation on whomever they choose without us calling it into question with a qualifier. By the way, did you have a source for the assertion "Though he was never ordained"? The only in-line cite for that sentence is the NYT article, which doesn't even contain the word "ordain".

Regarding Johnson's postsecondary experience, why make the statement more convoluted than it has to be? He claimed to have a doctorate degree from Kingsway; officials there say he didn't. What both seem to agree on is that he took classes there, so that's the simplest thing to say. His false claim to have had a doctorate doesn't seem all that important to me in the overall scheme of his biography, and noting it brings WP:CLAIM into play. Further, you seem intent on weaving in the fact that Kingsway is not accredited. In fact, your recent edit omits the name of the college entirely, as though the fact that it is non-accredited is more important than the name of the college itself! And citing another Wikipedia article as your source is a violation of WP:RSSELF. To me, the article should state that Johnson took classes from Kingsway. Folks interested in finding out more about what kind of college it is can look it up. Ideally, they'd just click through to our article on the college and find out that it isn't accredited (if they care), but we don't currently have an article on Kingsway. Hopefully, someone can rectify that. In any case, shoehorning its non-accredited status in this article seems to me to run afoul of WP:COATRACK. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 19:01, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

He was obviously given to confabulating his history, about most everything. He even lied under oath in a courtroom. I thought you were concerned about Kingsway being associated with him, coatracking, so I obscured it, but didn't remove it from the editing version of the article. There's no evidence that he took classes, "there." In fact, he likely only took a couple of correspondence courses and may not have completed them, nor even "passed" the courses by their standards, and they denied he had gotten any credential. The bible college has gone through changes of names and locations but it's very obscure and unaccredited. One of the articles cited referred to him, as I'd made clear, as a "bishop." They used quotes to convey the impression to their readers that he had simply made it up. I did not find the spiritual supervisor, overseer... definitions within the on line dictionaries I consulted. It doesn't mean whatever he intended it to mean. That would be devolving to Alice in Wonderland, "The word means what I want it to mean, nothing more, nothing less." The common definition is an earned title, conferred by a legitimate oversight body, with qualifications, duties, etc. He was not that, nor was he a mitered chesspiece. He also called himself "pope." I think for over a thousand years there's only been one pope, though there were a couple of rivals (Roman and Byzantine, I think) way back when. I guess if he called himself "The Messiah," that should be used in the article to describe him, by your reckoning. When I made the edit, I including this quoted terminology in the summary: "self-styled, pope, bishop, minister to outcasts," "self-appointed," "...called himself." That's three different sources that questioned his self-conferred appellations. Activist (talk) 21:09, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

@Activist: I would not argue that the man clearly has issues with the truth. I would not even strenuously argue against including the fact that he claimed to have a doctorate that he apparently did not have. However, I think we should start with the things all sources agree on – namely, that he completed coursework of some kind from Kingsway but did not receive a credential. If you want to follow that up with a sentence about how he misrepresented his qualifications under oath, I won't object. I just don't think it flows very well in the prose, and given that we already note how he claims to have raised the dead, this seems like a minor falsehood by comparison, and in my opinion, doesn't really add much to the text. Regarding Kingsway, though, I see no need to note its accreditation status in Johnson's article. That's just WP:COATRACKing to give a negative impression of the school, Johnson, or both. Again, we should have an article about the school, whatever its current name is, and we can put those details there. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 22:18, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

You very much misrepresent my reasoning. People are not entitled to whatever appellation they may claim. I would not, as you assert, argue in favor of our article calling him "The Messiah", nor have I argued in favor of our article calling him the pope, although he appears to have referred to himself as such. What I am saying is that he could have a legitimate claim to the title "bishop", whatever that means in his particular church. Using your "common definition", his church – as an independent, self-governing entity – could be construed as a legitimate oversight body for conferring such a title. Our article doesn't say he was a Catholic bishop or an Orthodox bishop; only that he was a bishop in his church. You have asserted in the article text, without attribution, as far as I am aware, that he was not ordained, but unless you know that for sure, his ordination would constitute the conveyance of the title by an oversight body. He also obviously had duties and responsibility within the congregation. Finally, we have at least some well-respected sources that leave the title unqualified. To me, that's enough that it's defensible to leave the title unqualified. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 22:18, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not misrepresenting anything.

Bishop: A senior member of the Christian clergy, typically in charge of a diocese and empowered to confer holy orders.
synonyms: diocesan, metropolitan, suffragan, eparch, exarch; formalprelate
"a meeting of the bishops"

Well respected sources did question or even lampoon his taking upon himself the title of "bishop." That they all failed to do so every time, in every article, is to question that all his various ludicrous claims (I love the "raising the dead" part...his "Lazarus" routine) he made, since they all weren't exhaustively challenged by some reliable sources that issued other challenges in the very same articles, somehow confers legitimacy on those spurious claims. Your position defies logic. Activist (talk) 17:28, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

@Activist: Again, you seem to misrepresent my argument. I did not claim that every source about Johnson has to discuss and challenge falsehoods for them to be false. His alleged raising of the dead is false, for example. His claim that he set up a morgue near Ground Zero seems pretty demonstrably false. His claim that his church's alcohol parties constituted communion are highly suspect, at best, based on any known definition of communion of which I am aware. Here are the differences in these examples and the issue of whether or not Johnson was a bishop:

1. Every source that discusses these issues raises doubts about their veracity. Not every source that discusses Johnson being a bishop raises such doubts. A good many respected sources seem to take no issue with it and report it as fact and without qualification.
2. The sources that raise doubts about these issues do so by offering some measure of proof to counter them. They called the school he claimed he had a degree from, and the school said he didn't have a degree. They talked to people at Ground Zero, none of whom knew anything about Johnson's alleged morgue. The Kentucky ABC found Johnson's communion defense not credible, enough that they still issued multiple fines. Even among the sources that qualify or dispute Johnson's status as a bishop, none has offered any refutation beyond "he made it up", at least as far as I've seen. Our article currently states, without attribution, that Johnson was never ordained. If that were actually cited to a reliable source, I'd concede the point.
3. In contrast to the lack of evidence refuting Johnson's status as a bishop, there are actually a couple of definitions, as I've discussed, under which he could have a logical claim to the title, and some sources have cited comments from his parishioners that indicate that they considered him some kind of spiritual leader.

In any case, I suspect we may be talking past one another, and we could use an RfC to gain consensus. I would still like you to respond to the Kingsway issue above, as I suspect we are closer to something we can both live with there. And, not to beat a dead horse, but I have challenged the uncited statement "Though he was never ordained". Per WP:BURDEN, you must either cite this to a reliable source or remove it. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 19:17, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Columbia Journalism Review

The Columbia Journalism Review had a story about the Kentucky Center for Investigative Journalism, and their story about Dan Johnson. Any journalist’s nightmare’: The Pope’s Long Con unraveled a web of lies, with tragic consequences They write: "Louisville Public Media created KyCIR, its nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom, almost four years ago to expose wrongdoing in the public and private sectors and to hold leaders accountable." --Nbauman (talk) 15:50, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up; I've incorporated it into the article. — fourthords | =Λ= | 16:39, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 16 December 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page to any other particular title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 07:53, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

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Dan Johnson (Kentucky politician) → ? – Based on the reliably-sourced prose in the article, Johnson was a religious leader since at least 1977, while he didn't become a politician until 2 January 2017, the same year he died. Further, the amount of the article concerning his religion is more than 1.76 times the size of the prose about his politics. I'm unfamiliar with the optimal nomenclature to use in this instance, reliable sources also referred to the subject as Dan Johnson (pastor), Dan Johnson (preacher), and Dan Johnson (bishop); I'm currently ambivalent about the specific target title. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 22:46, 16 December 2019 (UTC)—Relisted. – Ammarpad (talk) 16:20, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm also conflicted about this move. There is no question that more of Johnson's life was devoted to religion than politics. On the other hand, I doubt he would have ever met the threshold of notability had he not run for and attained public office. So should the title reflect what he spent most of his life doing, or what most people know him for? Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 17:23, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. I think politician is the most recognizable disambiguation. Were he to never run for office, he never would've become notable. Anecdotally, I had a passing familiarity with "the KY state rep who killed himself", but not much of his religious background. Nohomersryan (talk) 18:52, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

person infobox

On 8 January 2023 at 14:36 UTC, Roc0ast3r (talk · contribs) replaced the article's {{infobox person}} with {{infobox state representative}}. I undid that change 141 minutes later, saying, + re-modulization of {{infobox state representative}} […] which otherwise unduly emphasized his 245-day stint as a legislator (~8.7% of the article) over his 40-year religious career (~23.8–32% of the article). Roughly sixteen hours after that, Roc0ast3r largely replaced their initial edits in contravention of WP:BRD and with an detailed explanation of Update infobox.

Because that user did not begin the BRD discussion, I'm starting it for them, here. To explain my edit: the less-specific {{infobox person}} is more appropriate for the Johnson article because when multiple infoboxes could apply (officeholder, clergy), using one infobox over another can emphasize the importance of one aspect of the biography over another (this is also the case of person vs. specific infobox when the latter was a minimal aspect of the biography). This biography isn't to suggest Johnson was a one profession while also (or to a lesser extent) another; he's a person to whom both apply.

I have now replaced the original infobox pending this discussion. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 13:49, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I mainly did that edit for consistency with other Wikipedia articles for people who have held public offices (e.g. Clint Eastwood and Raphael Warnock). Also, Johnson's career as a politician, whilst not lengthy, made him way more notable than he ever would had he not run for office. Whilst I agree with you that using one infobox over another can draw more attention to admittedly a very small portion of his life, Johnson was and still is best known as a politician, not a religious leader. Putting emphasis on his political career is fine in my books because that's practically all he's known for. ronintalk 15:55, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

However, the only thing the article has sourced confirmation regarding Johnson's renown is hate speech, Facebook posts, 'and general derision for African-Americans and Muslims'. For editors to say he was better known for a than b is original research; our job is just to summarize the sources. This particular summary, a biography, is roughly 23.8–32% about the subject's 40-year religious career, and approximately 8.7% about his one-year political career; neither warrants being the primary focus nor infobox. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 17:35, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Okay, agreed. That's actually pretty reasonable. ronintalk 08:35, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

dates & sourcing

On 24 January 2024 at 07:23 UTC, Mad Mismagius (talk · contribs) changed the dates of Johnson's political tenure (from 2 January to 1 January), among other changes, all without explanation. Especially peculiarly, they didn't change the cited prose in the article. While looking into the change, I found that the Herald-Leader source was actually referring to 2 January 2018, not 2017, so I found two additional sources (Assembly calendar itself & Northern Kentucky Tribune) which referred to the 2017 legislative tenure beginning on 3 January, instead. On 24 January 2024 at 15:28 UTC, I made several changes to the article; of the date changes I duly explained + expansion (& date-corrections therewith).

It was 9.38 hours later when Mad Mismagius changed the infobox date (though, yet again, not the prose itself) back to 1 January, saying this time, Kentucky legislators assume office on January 1st, regardless of the day that the legislature convenes. See section 30 of the KY constitution. I appreciate this editor's belated explanation, and am generally predisposed to agree with their conclusion, if not their methods. Wikipedia:Verifiability says, All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution. Mad Mismagius did not and has not cited the appropriate source(s) to support their changes, rendering them in contravention of policy and subject to continued reversion until a reliable source is cited. Secondly, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes says to keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article. In this case, the infobox should reflect the cited prose of the article, which still refers to 3 January 2017, regardless of anything else. Infoboxes should simply be reflective of the prose, and shouldn't ever be contradictory (with the cited prose being superordinate).

I have updated the prose with a citation to a reliable source, and consequently the previous infobox change is now properly reflective. If anyone has any questions about any of this, please let me know! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 02:14, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Cool. Mad Mismagius (talk) 02:22, 25 January 2024 (UTC)