Talk:Cynthia Lennon/Archive 2

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GA

This article will be put back up for a GA rating soon.--andreasegde (talk) 15:47, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Like right now.--andreasegde (talk) 15:16, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

What has Cynthia Lennon written or told interviewers about her experience with domestic abuse?

As most readers will certainly know, the Internet is full of casual references to John Lennon being a domestic abuser, with some comments going so far as to say he belongs on the long list of #MeToo villians. Lennon helped create this perception with his now notorious (but somewhat vague) admission to Playboy magazine in 1980 that "I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically… any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women…". And apparently a former housekeeper of the Lennons claims to have witness one or more episodes of abuse.

To state the obvious, even one act of domestic violence is something to be treated seriously. But was Lennon a serial abuser, or a "monster" as many articles or blog posts online claim? If the evidence from Cynthia Lennon and others backs up this conclusion, it seems reasonable to include that information in this article or others. There's also the possibility that Lennon was painting his own past transgressions with an overly broad brush, making his younger self sound more awful (as a way of illustrating how much wisdom and serenity he had attained by 1980).

Dates

"Lennon serially bought her a white Mini, a gold Porsche, a red Ferrari, and a green Volkswagen Beetle," which has no date references, meaning Lennon could have possibly bought her the cars one after the other, in one day/week, or over a period of time. It is not clear, and should not be written as such.--andreasegde (talk) 19:39, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Without that, though, it reads as though he bought her four cars at once (which is something that people who come into sudden wealth have also been known to do). Wasted Time R (talk) 03:13, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Maybe "over time", or "during their time at Kenwood"?--andreasegde (talk) 18:38, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Still possible confusion over accumulation versus rotation. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:26, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll leave you to it, but I still think you're wrong. Have fun.--andreasegde (talk) 20:28, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

File:KenwoodFrontDoor.jpg Nominated for Deletion

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Style and tone

To Wasted Time R:

1: "he spent considerable amounts of time living inside his head", is so obviously strange, and physically impossible.

It's a description I've seen in various places for retreating into one's own world of thought. Davies says in his 1968 'End Bit' chapter, "John especially was simply living in his head." I've kept the language and added that page to the cite.

Errmmm... was that "language" taken from the book?"

Who knows. I've removed it. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:04, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

2: "He became somewhat uncommunicative towards most people, including Cynthia, except for the other Beatles, all of whom had an almost unspoken ability to understand one another." Very choppy sentence, and difficult to follow.

I've restructured it using a parenthetical.

3: "Then adding," as opposed to "He then added," is the difference between Present Continuous and Present Simple. It seems quite reasonable that it was all one sentence with a slight pause in the middle.

I've put in your wording.

4: Maybe saying, "She understood his attitude at the time, but felt somewhat frustrated".--andreasegde (talk) 14:43, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Both of your takes have had 'at the time' (your first edit said "She later admitted that ..."), but this was a contemporaneous remark, not something said in retrospect. I also think 'temperament' captures this better than 'attitude', but am okay with the latter if you strongly prefer. I did eliminate two redundant words at the end.

Hold on, "I've been a major contributor towards: Cynthia Lennon"?--andreasegde (talk) 21:11, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

In terms of content, if not edit count, I've made a significant contribution towards this article. You can get a rough idea by looking at the 500-edit article history and seeing all the three- and four-digit 'green' additions I've made. Obviously nothing to compare to yours! You've been through the battles with this article. In my GA count I'm the lead or sole writer on almost all of them, but two are cases where I started as a GA reviewer and ended up playing a significant role in the final result. That's all I meant to list these. Wasted Time R (talk) 04:42, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I was just wondering what could be bigger than major. :)) Mega, Giga? This could start a whole new chapter in Wiki. :) --andreasegde (talk) 15:57, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

'The lead' is bigger than 'a major', but I've changed it to 'a significant', which gets across the idea more modestly. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:36, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Style & Tone II

"Around the time of Julian's birth, The Beatles' career took off as a pop sensation in Britain, with their second number one single "From Me to You", with their first album Please Please Me climbing to the top of the charts, with their becoming the headlining act in concerts for the first time, and with Beatles fan magazines starting up. That one of the members was married and gaining a family was not publicly known; a 1963 "Lifelines of the Beatles" page in New Musical Express detailed over 25 biographical facts about, and likes and dislikes of, each of the four, but never gave any hint Lennon was married and indeed listed "girls" as one of his hobbies."

• "The Beatles' career took off as a pop sensation in Britain, with their second number one single", is VERY fancruft. This article is about the Lennons, not The Beatles' chart positions. It gets worse.--andreasegde (talk) 12:24, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

"Fancruft" usually means unimportant stuff. The things listed were hardly unimportant, but I agree it's a level of detail that isn't necessary in this article. The important thing to get across is that the Beatles suddenly became a pop sensation across the country, which inevitably meant that Cynthia's life was fundamentally changed at that point.Wasted Time R (talk) 02:10, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

• In this whole paragraph we start with Julian's birth, and then only get to the fact that Lennon was married (this is an article about Cynthia Lennon, y'know), in the last line. So fancruft, it reads like a panting dog in summer.--andreasegde (talk) 14:34, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand this comment. Marriage and Julian are fully dealt with in the previous section; the brief mention of Julian here is just to correlate the family and musical timelines. The core fact here is that during the initial surge of Beatles fame, Cynthia's very existence was denied. That's got to be relevant to her biography! The NME example is to viscerally convey how much fan obsession there was with the personalities of the Beatles, and yet this most basic aspect of John's life was hidden. And that he listed one of hobbies as "girls" is too priceless and prophetic to ignore. Anyway, I adjusted your most recent edit in a couple of places; I'm okay with it as it stands. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:10, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Putting comments straight after mine makes for very confusing reading. I have copied your signature to clear it up.--andreasegde (talk) 12:24, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Recent changes. It looks good.--andreasegde (talk) 12:28, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Really Obscure Trivia

An acquaintance is claiming John and Cynthia had dinner in a restaurant in Poughkeepsie (about 70 miles north of New York City) the night before the first Ed Sullivan appearance. I highly doubt it for a variety of reasons, but I have no more proof that they didn't than he has that they did. I would like to get some idea of what the group (including Cynthia) did that night.

Anyone?

--Mfwills (talk) 13:42, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Rayl, A. J. S.; Gunther, Curt (1989). Beatles '64: A Hard Day's Night in America (New York: Doubleday) says they spent the evening of 8 February having "a night on the town", including stops at the Playboy Club and the Peppermint Lounge. Doesn't sound too Poughkeepsie-ish to me. Wasted Time R (talk) 15:29, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Works for me. Thanks.--Mfwills (talk) 14:40, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Claim to fame?

I've removed some stuff from the lede of this article which did not belong in a WP bio lede. There, her claim to fame, other than being John Lennon's ex-wife, if any, needs to be summarized in brief.

Generally, this article seems extremely lengthy. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 17:36, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

SergeWoodzing, I respectfully but strongly disagree with your removals. WP:LEDE does not say that the lede must only contain material the establishes the person's "claim to fame". It does say that the lede must be a "summary of [the article's] most important aspects" and that "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview." Your reduced lead falls well short of doing both of those. Another way of looking at it is that this article contains around 33,000 readable prose characters and per WP:LEADLENGTH should have a length of three or four paragraphs. It did contain three, but after your edits it contains only one, and thus again is well short of the mark. It can't stay like this and still be a GA article.

As for the article being lengthy, I understand your reaction, but this article is in part about The Beatles as seen from a close but still outside viewpoint and what it was like to be one of their wives and the lingering after-effect that has on one's life. That's a pretty weighty subject. And like it or not, everything about The Beatles is considered noteworthy both in the real world and here in WP. For example, every single Beatle song ever recorded has its own article in WP, including ones that McCartney can no longer remember like Hold Me Tight and ones that still haven't seen release like Carnival of Light. All sorts of events in their lives have their own articles, including The Beatles' Decca audition that they failed and rash remarks like More popular than Jesus and so forth. And this is not just WP going overboard; there are huge numbers of books on The Beatles that have been published, a number of which are sources to this article. This is one of those subjects where there is intense, long-lasting interest, and the lives of Beatle wives is part of that interest. So in the context of all this, I believe the length of this article to be justified. Wasted Time R (talk) 01:04, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

The Jesus category on Wikipedia still has more articles than the Beatles category, but it's closer than it was in 1966. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:22, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Grossly overdone bio

OK, so the previous section didn't work as titled, because her "claim fo fame" apparently is considered huge (?).

I'm submitting the opinion under a new heading, Beatle connection or no, that this is a ridiculously over-worded, long-winded, trivia-jammed, repetitious article of the type that damages the image of enWP. Embarrassing for her when she was alive and to her memory now that she's died. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 16:52, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

You are of course entitled to your opinion, but thousands of people have visited the page since her death yesterday (stats page isn't giving the number yet) and about 25 different editors (including apparently distinct IP addresses) have edited the article since then, and not one has made this complaint. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:42, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I am also of the opinion that this article of way too long. I commented on this a couple of years ago and tried to winnow it down, but someone was extremely insistent about Cynthia's importance, and the inclusion of every mundane detail of her life. Please tell me the sentence about how Aunt Mimi would run the vacuum cleaner outside of Cynthia's room just to annoy her is gone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.187.93.29 (talk) 03:51, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

better picture, please

no one wants their wikipedia picture to be at age seventy in the middle of a sentence

please post a nicer picture 2600:1700:A3A0:1630:B81D:E8D1:6DB2:CEB3 (talk) 05:17, 9 April 2019 (UTC)