Talk:Patronage

Quibbles

Some quibbles:

• "Patronage ... is unpopular among voters" is patent nonsense -- politicians are often judged by their ability to obtain patronage for their constituents. More accurate would be something like "unpopular among reform-minded voters" or "viewed by some voters as a form of corruption."
• The example of Caligula's horse throws out the unsubstantiated claim that this is an example of patronage, rather than the traditional story of a crazy emperor and a powerless senate Doesn't belong here unless it can be documented, probably in a separate article. In any case, the maneuvers of a 1st century despot are probably not the best examples of a phenomenon associated with modern democracies.

---Isaac R 17:50, 27 April 2005 (UTC)

It's almost certainly considered a form of corruption by some non-voters as well. Let's try not to use 'voters' and 'people' interchangeably here. :\ - green_meklar 16:49, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Redirect

Why was the page "Half-Breeds" redirected here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.67.54.215 (talk) 01:56, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

See Stalwart, which is where I'll now redirect it, since the matter isn't even mentioned in this article. - Jmabel | Talk 15:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Canon law

The section on canon law appears to be a cut-and-paste from the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia. That's legal (it's public domain), but, really, this is the Catholic Encyclopedia at its worst: erudite to the point of unreadability, written for a specialist audience. - Jmabel | Talk 06:33, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. It's largely irrelevent to what this article should eventually become. Maybe most of it can be moved to a separate article.--ragesoss 13:30, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, I will cut it drastically. - Jmabel | Talk 04:45, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Halfbreeds

Uncommented change from the Halfbreeds being the Stalwarts rivals for patronage to opponents of patronage. I've always understood them to be the former. Citation please? - Jmabel | Talk 03:20, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Not a lot citable online. [1] places the Halfbreeds basically halfway between Stalwarts and Mugwumps, which makes sense, and which I will follow pending better citation. - Jmabel | Talk 05:08, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

i've read that the phrase mugwump is not from mug and wump but is from an indian word meaning "holier than thou" i beleive that this was from Thomas Baily's American pageant--Prunetucky 03:58, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

patronage vs. mecenate

hi, i'm a bit confused why this article is crosslinked with de:Mäzen, because in a mecenate, the person pays someone without any strings attached, but patronage seems to be quite different. --Trickstar 16:04, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

The basic concept is similar and it is the closest term commonly used. Inwind (talk) 19:36, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Must we applaud patronage in the arts?

The article seems to uncritically regard patronage in the arts as a beneficial practice. However, research would show that the patronage system required artists, writers, composers, actors, and others to curry favor with wealthy and well-placed sponsors in order to obtain support. One can see this, for example, in the groveling dedications of some literary works. In other words, patronage conflicts with artistic freedom. Another question is whether artists and other creative people have historically respected their patrons, or have they been regarded as a necessary evil? After all, talent is more important than money, isn't it? And is the present situation any better? If the artist needs to apply for grants, develop the right contacts, hang out with the in-crowd, etc., how does that differ from patronage? Hopefully some historian of the arts could help us out with answers to these questions. Hibrow (talk) 05:08, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Patron as "guest, client or customer"?

Today (Jan. 1st, 2015) "On this day" has this entry: "2009 – A nightclub fire in Bangkok, Thailand, killed 66 patrons celebrating the new year." I'm not a native English speaker, but I'm confused by this use of the word "parton", so I looked it up - and patron redirects here. According to the present article, regular customers can be called patrons, but I believe the OTD entry did not intend to imply that all those 66 customers who tragically died were in fact regulars. So something seems amiss here, but I'm not sure how to fix it. I guess common usage would be that the 66 customers were "partons" (customers) but that their relation to the nightclub was not necessarily "patronage" (regular customers). If so, the redirect of "parton" to "patronage" is a bit too blunt. Though, wikipedia is not a dictionnary, so perhaps things should just be left as they are? - A definition of this usage of "patron" could perhaps be along these lines: "A customer, guest or client in an establishment where one goes to spend time (rather than just to purchase goods and leave), such as a hotel, restaurant or club (rather than e.g. a grocery shop=" - i.e., I don't think random customers in a grocery shop are referred to as "patrons", but I may be mistaken about that.--Nø (talk) 14:27, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Neutral point of view?

In the Arts section there are few sentences that denote perhaps a biased approach to the topic. First of all, while it may be true that Samuel Johnson defined a patron as "one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help", I see no particular reason to include it in the page unless the objective is to cast a negative shade on the tradition of patronage. But even worse is the phrase, at the bottom of the Art section, "Though the nature of the sponsors has changed—from churches to charitable foundations, and from aristocrats to plutocrats": apart from the clearly negative connotation of the word "plutocrats", it's absolutely not true that aristocrats have given way to plutocrats in supporting arts. More and more, individuals from the middle class are supporting art development and restoration. I believe that written as such, part of the post denote a bias and ideology of the poster in relation to art. CarluttiC (talk) 13:58, 19 February 2016 (UTC)