Talk:Ivica Kostelić

Untitled

Stop spreading lies!!! That what's been said about Ivica Kostelic is highly exaggeration of one tabloid type magazine and BBC- media divoted to make picture about Croats as a nazis, ultranationalists, followers of Hitler etc...

One Croat

Loving youre homeland, doesn't make you nazi.

Well what facts do you have to back your point of view up? Kostelić's denial of statements is already mentioned in the article. If you've got verifiable, sourced facts that show that the facts in the article are wrong or controversial, feel free to put them in the article. Blanking pages which say things you don't want to hear is unacceptable, however. --Aim Here 13:26, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

As a difference, I'm FROM CROATIA, AND KNOW A "LITTLE" BETTER ABOUT THIS, so called "controversy", and how it was managed in the media, and what is much more important, who did this articles about this skyer and why! And there's nothing to hear that "is unacceptable", only to remove what's pure propaganda and spread of hatred!

I had been enough of depicting Croats and Croatia as a pro-nazi state, and as a nationalists!

We're not au pair to some "democratic" and so called "liberal" countries in the matter of nationalism. It's enough to see what's been going on in a past few months in a France, Netherlands, Denmark etc...

This what I have been doing is to remove something that isn't true, and what's pointless to stay since Kostelić already denied this! Prolongation of this part of article is nothing else than insulting anyone who's fair and just, and is in a manner of cheapest tabloids!

The BBC isn't one of the 'cheapest tabloids' by any stretch of the imagination, and the article mentions a statement Ivica made that was 'recorded'. Ivica doesn't appear to flat-out deny the allegations either, claiming his words were taken out of context. You can't dismiss a story out of hand just because it appears in a lousy newspaper when there's apparently some real evidence to back it up. Other than your dislike of the whole Croat-Nazi thing, which is understandable but irrelevant, do you have any specific factual issue with the article as it stands? --Aim Here 13:53, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I did not reffering to a BBC as a cheap tabloid- that is NACIONAL, but BBC published this exaggerated article ( of which reasons- I'm blank?!) as a verified "truth". It happens that I have watched HRT (Croatian television) on which Ivica not only denied this, yet called all that have been done by the nazis as a horror, and unthinkable evil! But, somehow BBC didn't find that necessary to publis- I wonder why! And something for the end, you know, you shouldn't consider all you see on BBC (or CNN) as a confirmed fact!!! BBC also had it's dark part in a bloody war's in EX YU!!!

You know, you shouldn't consider all you see on BBC (or CNN) as a confirmed fact!!! BBC also had it's dark part in a bloody wars in EX YU!!!

If your facts are holding on a BBC broadcast, then you have a very cheap argument!!! And also, from my point of view this article end is a vandalism! You should think about that!

Neither myself nor the article take the BBC article as fact. The Wikipedia article, as far as I can tell, reports that the BBC said something, and reports that Kostelić denied it. The article is neutral in tone. Have you got any pertinent facts that you can add to the article? I'm willing to accommodate the idea that Kostelić may have been misrepresented or taken out of context, but it has to be backed up with facts, not rant. And calling something vandalism doesn't make it so. --Aim Here 15:28, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think article is neutral, since it's making a "case" from something that's highly arbitrary. I don't know exactly when it was, but interwiew has been published on HRT with kostelić explaining things conserning this issue!

I'm not sure what case the article is making. It's stating a bunch of facts and leaving the reader to judge. As for your interview, feel free use that to improve the article. Even citing it would be a help. --Aim Here 15:44, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I've put an NPOV tag on it since this is a dispute. Any more reversions will be dealt with under the 3-revert rule. Please feel free to try to edit the section relating to the allegations to something we can agree on. --Aim Here 15:53, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

This weird controversy doesn't need to be in this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.139.54.248 (talk) 01:31, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

No "lies" here

To the best of my knowledge, everything that has been written in the "Controversy" section is true. The story basically went as follows:

1. Kostelic gave an interview to Nacional
2. Among other things, he said what he said
3. Nacional published it, putting emphasis on the Nazi issue
4. At first Kostelic tried to deny it, saying that his words were distorted, but Nacional put the MP3 recording of the interview on the web, proving otherwise
5. Kostelic later said for the record that he considers Nazism "one of the greatest evils in human history"; maintains that the quotes were misinterpreted

Kostelic may or may not be a Nazi sympathizer; the article doesn't say either way. Nacional may or may not have been fair to Kostelic; the article doesn't say either way. The controversy section may or may not unduly outweigh the rest of the article; this is somewhat debatable. But there are no "lies" or a major NPOV problem in the article, and unless I'm proven wrong here, the NPOV notice goes down in 72 hours. GregorB 21:22, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

This is why Wikipedia is a bad source of information for biographies. Printed biographies of people are usually written by someone who knows the person or at least met him on number of occasions, read dozens of his interviews and possibly did couple of interviews on his own. People who are eagerly keeping this controversy section alive know nothing about Ivica. He is a history student at University of Zagreb. From his young age he loved history and reading books about history has been his favorite hobby. Every historian is fascinated by Hitler and no history book will tell you nazism is a bad regime because it is understood. Historians talk objectively about nazism and that's exactly what he did. He never in his life said that he sympathizes nazism. That BBC article that you are using as a source is a pure sensationalism. If you read his entire interview in Nacional you'll see that he approaches things from historian perspective, not his personal. He might be a bad historian but he is definitely not a Nazi.Fletch101 (talk) 20:44, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

And this is exactly why printed biographies are often biased. Taking too much information about a subject from the subject itself can lead to various misinformation. The Kostelić article as it is now is hardly the highlight of Wikipedia; and news articles from foreign sources, like BBC in this case, can and sometimes will result in information badly interpreted by the news reporters. However, the damage done is far less than the damage caused by using original research, as interviews are by far not the most objective source. If you're not convinced yet, see the article about longevity claims. Be it a sensation or not, the incident did happen and the sole fact that it was covered by BBC means it was major and it would be an error for a biographist not to include it (I will not discuss the way of source interpretation here). Admiral Norton ^(talk) 21:08, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

There have been at least three or four attempts to blank the sections, but I have undone all of them. The man's sports achievements certainly deserve a better article, but blanking is not the way to do it. The full story in the Nacional article is even uglier; when, on top of everything else, Kostelic says that "liberal democracy is a fraud",[1] then it's very difficult to believe in "quoting out of context". GregorB (talk) 00:36, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

"Democracy is a system which appears acceptable to people because it gives them the illusion that they hold the power. Today the most acceptable form of government, liberal democracy, is actually cheating the people. For it is neither liberal nor democratic, and the best example is the US. Their democracy is best seen in the fact that the presidential elections were won by George Bush and not by Al Gore, who received more votes from the people. Bush only had more electoral votes, which is why he won, meaning that the votes of the citizens of America mean nothing, and that the votes of the 1000 electorates mean more than 150 million Americans. And that is democracy?”. If you want an example of quoting out of context then your statement "liberal democracy is a fraud" above is an excellent example. I guess it's only acceptable when the New York Times writes an editorial stating Al Gore should have been elected. When a Croatian person makes the same claim he is clearly a Nazi making "ugly" comments, not someone who believe that the popular vote should be the determining factor in an election. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.192.37.122 (talk) 13:27, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

When I said above "on top of everything else", I meant that this liberal democracy statement - which would not, as you duly noted, be normally problematic - becomes problematic when it's interpreted within the context of his other statements. After winning the slalom in Kranjska Gora, Kostelic said that he owes his victory to being "as ready as a German soldier on 22 June 1941".[2] At the time, the Croatian media didn't see it as much more than a very poor choice of metaphor, but his subsequent statements made it into something more, and, frankly, I cannot blame people who read into his liberal democracy quote, because I'd say it's within reasonable doubt. So, "out of context" depends what exactly "context" is, and do Wehrmacht soldiers come into it or not. GregorB (talk) 08:50, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

The quote stands on it's own, and I don't see what Wehrmacht soldiers have to do with it. He states clearly that Liberal democracy cheats people because it is not liberal or democratic and so defrauds people of what they would actually desire. So your interpretation of this statement is that Kostelic thinks that a liberal and democratic system is a poor choice of government? What exactly is ugly about this statement? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.252.166.143 (talk) 18:04, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Nothing. Also, when Kostelic's father says he'd vote for a "tall" president, with "blue eyes",[3] there's nothing ugly about that either, but one is left thinking about whether there is a system behind all that or not. What I'm trying to say is that, although uncharitable reading into someone's statements is indeed unfair, there is room for reasonable doubt here. GregorB (talk) 23:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

One thing, though: Nacional made a headline with "Nazism is a healthy system", while Kostelic in fact said it is healthier than communism. That's a rather gross distortion. (And, had e.g. Slavoj Zizek said that, noone would have actually paid any attention to it.) GregorB (talk) 23:22, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

This whole thing was hugely blown out of proportion by Nacional and other tabloid-like sections of the media (which in Croatia constitues pretty much the entire local media scene). Yes, he is clearly not exactly the brightest marble in the box - so what? Neither him nor his father were ever politically active in any way, and a right-wing line of thinking can hardly be traced through dozens of interviews he gave over the years without resorting to cherry-picking his poorly worded thoughts and taking them out of context. If one insists on keeping these bits in the article then his exact words should be included to avoid the appearance of the section being a load of contentious and harmful material. Like "On 13 January 2004 after finishing 4th in a slalom race Ivica said that "herds of elephants were seen roaming around Kitzbuhl". Commentators writing for the Nacional popular weekly, Vecernji list daily and the BBC all interpreted the statements as possible hints of his support for the Party of Free Elephants. His spokesman later issued an apology two weeks later which said that Kostelić "was not thinking of elephants as such when he made the statement but rather a group of overweight hippopotamuses". Nacional responded by publishing a videotape of Kostelic in which he is shown imitating elephant sounds and wearing a helmet made of ivory, but which also showed that his statement was taken out of context as he was talking about the elephant-shaped hot-air balloons advertising Kids-U-Fell, a charity which supports disabled children who had been seriously injured in skiing accidents." See what I mean? Just stick to the facts and provide the context. Timbouctou (talk) 00:25, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Gregor: You must know that Zizek has made similar statements about communism and Nazism since you brought it up. To Timbouctou: I don't think it's fair to say that he is not the brightest marble in the box when Zizek (who is considered an intellectual) has discussed similar issues. He clearly states that the Holocaust was the work of an idiot, yet somehow he has Nazi sympathies. Maybe we should somehow include actual quotes of the interview, and let the reader decide what is sympathies are. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.252.166.143 (talk) 19:48, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

"I don't think it's fair to say that he is not the brightest marble in the box when Zizek (who is considered an intellectual) has discussed similar issues." - Exactly. Žižek discussed these issues while Kostelić merely made a comment. If a professional historian of WWII happened to say in a lengthy interview that "Hitler was in fact a nice guy" the statement would be seen by everyone quite differently as compared to the same sentence uttered by a professional footballer after a match. This is what Ivica should have been aware of. It is not the content that made the comments controversial but their context as they are inappropriate. Ivica has a right to his opinion but he should be aware that what he said may have seemed unacceptable to many others. And it is his lack of awareness for this that makes him appear as a simpleton, notwithstanding his sporting achievements. In any case, we have two issues here - whether the comments and the tabloid interpretations should be included in the article at all, and if so - how. IMO this is a minor episode and the article wouldn't lose much if this was dropped altogether - but if we are to include it than the exact statements should be quoted and attributed and any contentious wording should be avoided. I've read the Nacional and BBC articles an from what I've seen Ivica's and Ante's views are actually libertarian, stemming from an emphasis on individualism. BBC covered it in a very sensationalist manner, even claiming that "many of Croatia's leading sportsmen are outspoken nationalists", which is hardly fair or unbalanced. So if we are to retain this then the section should be re-titled "Political views" and it should include a broader take on his opinions. Although Nacional originally did take some comments out of context and distorted them to make headlines, the entire article paints a better picture and puts them in context. Ivica's and Ante's views may be eccentric but I wouldn't call them fascist or nationalist, which is exactly what the current wording implies. Also, note that Nacional published parts of a recorded interview they had made with Ivica way earlier but originally decided to ignore them. It was only after his comment at Kranjska Gora that they decided to dig out the interview and base the new article on previously unpublished sections of it. So even Nacional did not think it was newsworthy at the time the interview had been made. Also, Ante says he would vote for Nadan Vidošević because he has "black hair and blue eyes" and offered no explanation as to why he thought these were good criteria. And he also said that his first option would be Ante Ledić because he is "tall, handsome and runs 100 metres in 10.3 seconds". Ante (and the entire family) may well be crazy but this does not sound like they are a bunch of neo-Nazis to me. Timbouctou (talk) 20:46, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that Ivica has obtained his degree in history from the university of Zagreb (perhaps he is still in his studies though) so I don't see why he cannot have such an opinion. I would hate to live in a society in which stating controversial opinions makes one a simpleton. I agree with you that this section does not really add much to the article, but removing it will be impossible due to ethnic rivalries. Do you have any suggestions on how to achive a fair balance without making this section half of the article?

Controversy

I rewrote the section to add more context and I included direct quotations of some of the controversial remarks and his responses to the allegations. I've kept all the original sources (I only replaced the Croatian version of the Nacional article with the English one, since it is readily available online) and I added some more. This Guardian article was particularly helpful. Timbouctou (talk) 02:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I added a full quotation instead of the partial quote and removed the statement that he spoke "favorably" about Hitler, as this is biased. This section has a lot of undue weight in the article but at least people can clearly see what he said without any need for wikipedia interpretations of his quotes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.99.156.224 (talk) 05:23, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

The "full quotation" 979 words long is unnecessary per WP:UNDUE. You might as well copy the entire Nacional article in here. The controversy section was intended to give a summary of the said controvery, not give it a dedicated chapter in the article. Also, that he compared "favourably" Hitler vs. Stalin is exactly how BBC.co.uk phrased it. Timbouctou (talk) 18:33, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Better to copy the entire article than to include opinions. There is a difference in "Kostelic compared Hitler favourably with Stalin" which was put under a caption of a picture in the BBC article and stating that Kostelic "spoke favorablly about Hitler" as was in the Wikipedia article, which as written, implies that it was Nacional not the BBC who felt that Kostelic spoke favorable of Hitler. I can say that person A is bigger asshole than person B but this is not a favorable statment about person B, just a comparative one (person B is still an asshole). I edited the quote as well if you want to use the other quote than you should edit the entry to state that the BBC reported that "Kostelic compared Hitler favourably with Stalin" along with the quote:"However, Hitler didn’t kill his generals every day, he only killed off those conspiring against him. There is the big difference, and I would have done the same if I were some big dictator. While Stalin killed off his generals daily, including his friends.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.99.156.224 (talk) 23:19, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

If all he did was "give his opinion on the differences" between X and Y then why is the section titled "controversy" instead "Ivica's opinions about how one should select people to kill off"? Because some sections of he media portrayed it as he spoke about Hitler favourably - and that is where the so-called controversy originated from. So the section must say what the media thought he said in addition to what he actually said. So yeah, "including opinions" is basically the definition of reporting what the media had said about someone, whether the subject in question is Gadaffi, Obama or Ivica Kostelić. Timbouctou (talk) 00:23, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Again there is a difference between "Kostelic compared Hitler favourably with Stalin" with Ivica "spoke favorably of Hitler". Do you not see how these two statements are different? See my example in the above post. Opinions can be controversial. The article does NOT say he spoke favorably about hitler! It says he compared one to the other and found one better, do you see a difference? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.99.156.224 (talk) 00:28, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

That same article described his "opinions" and "comparisons" as "Nazi remarks". Also, your version is true but the wording is misleading - he was not asked by any reporter to compare Stalin or Hitler - the comparison through which he arrived to the conclusion that Adolf was better was his own invention. He could have compared Hitler with Churchill, or Gandhi with Mandela. But he didn't. He chose a comparison in which he made Hitler look better, and that is why there was this controversy in the first place. Nobody ever asked him to compare communism and national socialism. And your wording looks like he was answering a quiz about WWII. Timbouctou (talk) 00:44, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

If you would like to put that his opinions came under fire as being Nazi remarks in the BBC then this is true as that is what the BBC wrote. None of the sources say he spoke favorably of Hitler, so the article should not imply such a serious statement especially when he directly says that the holocaust was the vision of an idiot (Hitler in this case). Is this somehow a favorable statement about Hitler? Why not include this quote in the article? I think my wording is fair actually, he gave his opinion, and some people found it controversial. Why he discussed these issues is unknown to me as I was not there. Lets not add our interpretation to what was reported or said. I would like to say that I think your effort to improve this article is more balanced that previous versions, but I think Wikipedia need to be careful about articles which imply (through improper wording) that a person thinks Hitler was wonderful and Nazi ideology was great. Public statements like these are a serious crime in some countries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.99.156.224 (talk) 01:05, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

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