Tucker Carlson's photograph vanishes from Wikipedia

[hsher]

Now this is most interesting: after he made the infamous statement on "The Chris Matthews Show" October 8, MSNBC pundit Tucker Carlson seems to have attracted an unusual and specific, quiet Wikipedia biography defacing: literally.

His bio photograph, which has been in place on Wikipedia's site for years, has COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED.

See for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Carlson

There are many other ways to deface a person's Wikipedia biography, and Carlson's has certainly seen its share of them since 1999, especially following Jon Stewart's incendiary appearance on "Crossfire". The usual method Carlson-hating Wiki vandals use is to insert libellous statements about him into his biography. This time, however, he has been "disappeared". Removing a person's photo from their largest public bio makes a specific kind of statement the Sicilian Mafia would understand very well.

"Coincidence"? Any theories?

[MadMaddie]

1. What did he say?

[Divine Discontent]

3. here ya go

http://youtube.com/watch?v=wxp1d-2Ltts

be sure to check out my other recent videos!

[MadMaddie]

11. Thanks....

[hsher]

4. He exposed that the GOP hates Christian evangelicals.

He was the first conservative to expose this on national television. He did so 10-8-06. As of 10-9-06, his photograph vanished from the site.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/10/10/tucker-carlson-to-evangelicals-duped/

[Divine Discontent]

2. lol

well I doubt there's a hit out on him, but maybe they're going to put another photo without the bow tie on? you could upload a new photo of him if you have one. if he gets 'hit' then we'll know that's not a good thing to have happen to you, lol.

[sfdiva]

5. I am a democrat but I like Tucker I may not agree with him but ...

he is entertaining n/t

[ClusterFreak]

6. Sicilian Mafia?

That's a little melodramatic, isn't it?

Anyway...whatever.

[hsher]

10. Not melodramatic

I used to run round with Mafia types in Vegas during the Nineties. This is not melodramatic at all. It sends a clear message. Think for a minute if you had a prominent news journalist acquaintance or family member who revealed something dangerous and extremely damaging about the Republicans to the national forum during a very important election, and then you received a photo of him in the mail with his face missing. Then think about Senator Paul Wellstone.

Now: does it seem "melodramatic"?

[hsher]

7. Should I email him and warn him about this?

Warn him to be careful?

It's "his turn" to email me back in our friendship/whatever, but I have a weird crawling sensation about this one and feel I'd better shoot him a quick heads-up about it.

[Karenca]

8. I see his photo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tucker_Carlson.jpg#file

[hsher]

9. That's later in the article. The main one is missing.

The main one is far larger and is an official issue from MSNBC, always seen near the top of the page. It hasn't been missing the entire several-years existence of the biography article.

[RadiDem]

12. Not as conspiratorial as it may appear

Just look in the 'history' and you will see:

11:41, 12 October 2006 OrphanBot (Talk | contribs) (Removing image with no source information. Such images that are older than seven days may be deleted at any time.)

I hope it gets replaced with a photo of him getting booted off 'dancing with the stars' :-)

[hsher]

13. Well, if he winds up facedown in the Potomac...

... we'll know for sure, eh?

P.S. - the photograph *had* source information and permissions. It originated from MSNBC and was an official issue, complete with its printed permissions listed beneath it on its post page. Also, I edit for Wiki and have never encountered "OrphanBot" on that page before. Go ahead and check, I'm sure OrphanBot is some long-time veteran Wiki editor; I'm just sayin' *I've* never encountered him before.

P.S.P.S. - Dick Carlson, Tucker's father, was an orphan.
That's not well-known.

[RadiDem]

14. I've had a photo deleted by orphanbot

You can see the info here. (add G to the follwing - it's a page not an imgae)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tucker.JP


If you are an editor, you can probably add source info, and resubmit it.

[hsher]

17. Factually, that link tells me nothing (sorry)

Neither your name nor OrphanBot's user name are depicted anywhere on the page. Listen: this is just me ranting and trying to stir up a fun conspiracy theory, not prove the existence of life on Mars... I am a *wee* worried, because as I said, I have seen some unusual ways of threatening people while hanging around Mafia casino owners, and my father had close dealings with the CIA when I was a kid. I saw and overheard some *extremely* questionable and disturbing things. I'm sure the stuff I didn't see or hear was even more disturbing. I'm certainly not insisting something violent is brewing here, but I do know there are people in Washington who live a little differently than you or I do, take politics more seriously than we do, and see nothing at all amiss with taking what we would consider irreversible, drastic, even immoral actions to get revenge, get a point across, or shut a giggly, talkative and slightly pudgy news anchor's mouth. Permanently. Especially when that anchor's father is Deep High Level GOP and is supposed to have tighter control of his boy than that.

You don't know the kind of world those people live and work in. I've seen glimpses of it from time to time. Read up a little bit on Tucker Carlson's actual past in Washington and the high levels of people he's repeatedly "betrayed" and pissed off, especially since 1998. He's made more enemies than I'd care to name or number. Karen Hughes is the very least of them. Grover Norquist is another. Tucker Carlson Hatred goes all the way up the GOP food chain to * himself, who feels PERSONALLY betrayed by him. Why?

Link: http://www.dangerouscitizen.com/Photo+Gallery/568.aspx

And in a world where vengeful right-wing Republicans have made "troublesome" Senator Paul Wellstone "disappear", where do some of y'all folks get this fairy tale idea an upper crust kid with a big mouth who won't listen to his daddy and watch his tongue ain't gonna disappear too, if he damages a core voter base and somebody upstairs gives the word?

Believe me, erasing a person's photo from Wikipedia could easily be Somebody's shorthand for silencing a certain naive bigmouth forever. Remember, "if it's not on Wiki, it doesn't exist..." So if Tucker's gigantic main photograph, which has never been nipped from a page by your boy OrphanBot OR ANYBODY ELSE all the time the site has existed, suddenly "no longer exists" mere hours after Carlson opens his mouth and reveals the most damaging news the Republican's core voter base could have possibly heard, just before the 2006 elections...?

You better wake up and smell the Starbucks, my friend. Why don't you bring me some actual facts on OrphanBot and then come back to me? I'm liking this.

:tinfoilhat: Ping. Tinfoil hat *on*.

[RadiDem]

18. OK, I suspect OrphanBot is actually GROVER NORQUIST

and he wants to drown Tucker in a bathtub...

For abandoning the bowties.

Better?

:-)

[hsher]

24. Perhaps OrphanBot is now after YOU...

Hmm. And just what do YOU do at high-levels of government?
Maybe we should call you RaDeepThroat... :evilgrin:

[hsher]

15. The conspiracy deepens...

Let's take RadiDem's cue and actually continue reading the history of the Tucker Carlson page over at Wikipedia: these are some of the contributions "OrphanBot" has made to Wiki:

06:35, 13 October 2006 (hist) (diff) User talk:ChristianMusicFan (You've uploaded an image with unknown copyright) (top)
06:22, 13 October 2006 (hist) (diff) THE AUTHORITY (Removing image with no copyright information. Such images that are older than seven days may be deleted at any time.) (top)
06:19, 13 October 2006 (hist) (diff) Image:Asaviour.jpg (Listing pages that the image has been removed from) (top)
06:19, 13 October 2006 (hist) (diff) Asaviour (Removing image with no copyright information. Such images that are older than seven days may be deleted at any time.) (top)

:tinfoilhat: PING! Tinfoil hat now firmly in place.
I LOVE a good conspiracy theory!

[RadiDem]

16. Orphanbot burns books >

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:OrphanBot

OrphanBot's current task is to remove images that are in Category:Images with unknown source and Category:Images with unknown copyright status from articles, so that administrators can delete them.

Images in the article, category, and portal namespaces will be removed. Images in the wikipedia, mediawiki, mediawiki talk, template, help, and help talk namespaces will be left alone, but a message will be logged on the bot's talk page. Images in all other namespaces will be completely ignored.

Additionally, OrphanBot inspects newly-uploaded images for ones lacking source information, a license tag, or a fair-use rationale if one is needed.

OrphanBot was written in Perl using the Pearle code for accessing Wikipedia.


In simple terms:

What OrphanBot does:

1. OrphanBot tags images with no description as {{no info}} and images with no copyright tag as {{untagged}}
2. OrphanBot removes images with certain tags from articles using them.
3. OrphanBot notifies the presumed uploader of the impending deletion.

[hsher]

19. Well, alright, "you're right and I'm wrong"...

You seem adamant to kill the thread. OK, you win. Tucker's in no danger and the timing of this is all just a massive coincidence. I concede and tip my hat to you.

But if anything happens to my friend, I will track you down... :spank:

[RadiDem]

20. Please see my new theory above

Tucker may be in MORTAL DANGER.

Contact him ASAP ;-)

[hsher]

21. Too late! :)

He's already dead.

See what you did? (sniff)

[Divine Discontent]

22. I like the 2006 tucker

a lot more than the old tucker, but I don't like tucker in general for being mean spirited about Cindy Sheehan if I recall correctly, no? (not letting this thread die!)

[hsher]

23. OK, you've done it now :D

Here's some more conspiracy bs for us late-nighters:

1. The mysterious OrphanBot: what's with the Christian fixation (see above) it appears to have, if, as RadiDem suggests, it is a non-human crawlbot?

2. OrphanBot could = "Orphan, Bought" - as in "bought off by the Republican Party". As mentioned above, Tucker Carlson's father Richard W. Carlson is an orphan, and this is far from common knowledge. GOP insiders, of course, would know it. It's no secret Dick Carlson is very well paid off by high-level GOP insiders. The elder Carlson even runs a legal defense fund for Scooter Libby, and was its first contributor, adding six figures immediately to the pot to help his "close and dear friend". Yep, it's true. So Dick Carlson could be the "orphan bought".

3. OrphanBot could be in itself or himself a coded threat message to not Tucker Carlson but to Dick Carlson. "Hey, Orphan. We bought your ass a long time ago. Either get your son in check or his four children will become orphans."

4. If RadiDem is correct, it still doesn't explain why Tucker Carlson's photograph would vanish from Wikipedia NOW. Wikipedia does not have a "starmeter" to tabulate the number of hits its entries are attracting, as the Internet Movie Database does. I am listed on IMDB and can log into Pro instantly to see how many people are looking up my actual name on Google and other search engines. The searches affect the starmeter and cause the graph by my name to spike. (Actually it's risen dramatically recently. Woo hoo!) (I am unsure why. Frowny face and look of worry.)

5. There were already several high-level neocons who wanted Carlson very dead after his negative Talk Magazine expose of Bush just before the 1999 election (see link in above post). It is beginning to look like Tucker is, as many Freepers suspect openly, a trojan horse fond of breaking extremely damaging news about Republican candidates immediately preceding elections. He's gone and done it again. That's more than two incidents of it now. How many neocons do you suppose want him dead NOW?

6. As I said before, my dad was a Fed. Just from living that lifestyle as a Fed's kid, I can tell you right now:

TUCKER TALKS DANGEROUSLY TOO GODDAMN MUCH.

For instance, there's plenty of stuff I know that I know way better than to express in print even to you guys, whom I love, here at DU. Such as what dept my father worked in, what his GS level was, and what he did for a living. Tucker would yap those details in a heartbeat because he loves the "romance" of being a journalist and political author, and seems to be forgetting that the level of candor he adores could endanger his father's career, his father's life, and his own life.

The level of GOP Richard Carlson works at is kind of like a club. Once you're in it, you're in it for life. Betray that club, you just may disappear. At the very least, your son will, if he becomes too much of a troublemaker.

Tucker's indiscretion on Matthews the other day I believe would qualify him as troublemaker.

Thread still alive!

[Divine Discontent]

29. Tucker

acts like the spoiled rich kid that is never taken seriously and so he wants to point out all that he's heard so he's respected like his wealthy upbringing... just my take on him from seeing him on TV a couple hundred times. I want to like him, but he says things at times that really are annoying, that stick his foot in his mouth, but he's getting better.


I'd still warn him about the wiki photo... that's odd. I think there's dozens of people that would want him gone... why wouldn't they? there's someone in the world who wants every adult gone I bet, right? so why wouldn't a semi-celeb have tons of people that want him gone, and in turn, tuck has been saying some pretty salacious accusatory banter, now hasn't he!

continued? lol

[cboy4]

25. I will take back everything crappy I've said about Tucker if he

abandons the evil-doers on the right!

:kick: to keep the thread alive

[hsher]

26. Somebody needs to do a poll on that!

"Will Tucker Carlson one day become a liberal?"

Yes -

No -

If the GOP really screws him -

Who cares, hang the fucker by his bowtie -

---

I'd do it, but I've posted enough about the poor guy already.

"Keep the thread alive!" - Jesse Jackson

[cboy4]

27. LOL....that Jesse Jackson is quite the wordsmith!

:spray:

[Bucky]

28. Let us take a moment to discriminate between internet vandals & the mafia

You ask "Coincidence"?

Since you state that Wikipedia's page on Carlson has been getting steadily defaced "since 1999" I don't see how this event coincides with anything. For that matter, since Wikipedia started in 2001 I don't see how Tucker's article could be getting defaced since 1999. In fact, the article on Tucker Swanson McLean Carlson wasn't added to Wiki until July 2004.

As for the Cosa Nostra and their ilk, I'm quite certain that if mobsters wanted to send Tuck a message, they'd toss a dead cat over his fence or slash his tires or sneak into his house at night to snap the heads off of his My Little Pony collection. Defacing his Wikipedia bio is pretty far down on the "Louie, send dis guy a message" scale.

[hsher]

30. "My Little Pony"????? No! No!

My friend, that's gone too far. If somebody snapped the heads off MY My Little Pony collection, I'd get out of town after resurfacing from a nervous breakdown. Yes, that indeed sends a message when the Syndicate has gotten up out of the wrong side of bed about you. That message is DIE!!!!!!

And re: 1999, I was thinking about the Talk article and typed the wrong year. Thanks for the correction.

... is this thread even still alive?