Ahh, an attempt at, let’s call it, a “Paul Wellstone” press event. And like Wellstone’s attempt, I’m very glad it failed and I hope people face at least some fines and Trump faces public backlash for it.
***For those that are too young or have never heard of it. Paul Wellstone DFL senator from Minnesota tried to hold a political rally at The Wall, Vietnam war memorial. He was widely panned and condemned for his total tone deafness by not only the opposition, but his own party and constituents. It almost cost him his re-election. But political memories being what they are, was swept under the rug for his advantage.
I am trying to find this event. Its the first time chat gpt outright called me a liar. I see his memorial service which was for all those who died in a plane crash in 2002 was used by Walter Mondale to use Paul’s death as a spring board for his election bid… was there some other event you are referring to?
Maybe use a search engine instead of an LLM? It’s pretty easy to find. On a sidenote, ChatGPT and similar LLMs are known to be absolutely unreliable and error prone. Please do yourself a favor and don’t rely on anything an LLM tells you.
That’s what i did. I looked it up and did not find what i was looking for. Closest thing i found was the event in 2002 which was eerily close to the event you mentioned, but i could not find what you said. So i asked you for more information. Jees! You snapped back at me like a stack overflow user.
His funeral was a whole 'nother kettle of fish. Another poor look for the state of Minnesota DFL. There seems to be some washing of his memory apparently. It was a big deal and made national news at the time. Perhaps search for news articles from papers like the Washington Post or New York Times. Perhaps the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I remember it well because I’m old enough to have been there. It kind of made me question my voting for him. Still, I voted for him again and would have again when he was killed - despite his campaign promise of only being a one term senator. (He was pro term limits until it was HIS term also)
Ah thank you! It struck me that something abhorrent that trump has done could be referred to some other event with another politician, and yet not be widely known. I had to look it up. Though with trump being a sewage house spewing events like this out on the regular, no individual event will get the scorn it deserves. You may be on to something about the white washing thing though. Like i said, chat gpt isn’t even as forceful in denouncing flat earth. Not sure what’s up with that. His wiki also is missing any mention, and doesn’t even have a controversy section most politicians have.
While I agree with what others are saying about not using LLMs for fact checking. It is a useful tool to gain context before gathering more research, so I think the downvotes are a bit harsh. I’d recommend using a different LLM - GPT4o had no issues providing me with some context.
I think that the issue was how i was asking for context on Paul Wellstone using the Vietnam memorial. Here was the response i initially received:
“Wellstone did not attempt to film or hold a political event at the Vietnam War Memorial. The controversy you’re thinking of might be related to the backlash following his 2002 memorial service, where the event was criticized by some for taking on a political tone.
Wellstone himself was known for his deep respect for veterans and did not engage in actions like filming political content at war memorials. The Vietnam War Memorial is a solemn site, and there hasn’t been any documented attempt by Wellstone to use it for political purposes.
If there’s something specific you’d like to discuss or clarify about this, please let me know!”
As you can see it shut down the thought in a manner gpt does not do lightly. So i googled, and found his wikipedia page, and a lite skim painted him as uncontroversial. And i got a lot of google hits on the 2002 plane crash memorial being co-opted for political gains. So i returned here for more context.
I don’t get the LLM hate. Reminiscent of the Wikipedia and general Internet hate before it, I think. It has its uses, especially in terms of general knowledge and brainstorming, but as any regular Internet user knows, you don’t just believe the first thing you read.
Here’s a fun search challenge that stumped my normal methods:
Back in the 90s Star Trek actor Michael Dorn hosted a show where he was introducing… Something. I don’t know if it was a one-off or a weekly thing, but he introduced himself by saying, “Hi, I’m Michael Dorn,” in his deep-ass voice, then he went on to talk about whatever he was introducing. The rest is a mystery to me, I just don’t remember it well enough, but for whatever reason I remember that one line clear as day. But what the hell show was it and what was he introducing?
