Talk:Attempted assassination of Andy Warhol

The second paragraph of "Background" is blatantly editorialized, asserting personal opinion of the Factory members as statements of fact. ~2026-17850-45 (talk) 14:21, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

I noticed that too, I just went to peek back here to take a look, anyone know what happened? Wikipedia moment? ~2026-18264-08 (talk) 16:27, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

I just went in and undid the edit, I don't usually use wikipedia but I figured its better that way. If there is good reason to keep it, revert. ~2026-18264-08 (talk) 16:31, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

It has been proposed in this section that Attempted assassination of Andy Warhol be renamed and moved to Attempted murder of Andy Warhol. A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil. Please use {{subst:requested move}}. Do not use {{requested move/dated}} directly. Links: current log • target log • direct move

Attempted assassination of Andy Warhol → Attempted murder of Andy Warhol – The current title calling it an assassination attempt implies Solanas shooting Warhol was an attempt to kill him for political or ideological reasons. However by as discussed in the article Solanas's own statements at trial and for the rest of her life she wished to kill him for personal reasons related to his perceived wrongs against her and not out of any ideological reason. Meanwhile stating that it was an attempt to murder him is a neutral point of view description. TaqPCR (talk) 18:34, 26 April 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. Jeffrey34555 (talk) 17:21, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

• Support per nomination. --PoliticalPoint (talk) 19:37, 26 April 2026 (UTC) ( Blocked sockpuppet of Justthefacts, see investigation) ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 14:12, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
• Move to Shooting of Andy Warhol, which best satisfies WP:CRITERIA. 162 etc. (talk) 20:04, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
• Support, she did try to murder him and not just shoot him. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:36, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

That does not seem to be true. The conviction was for assault, not attempted murder, and the article quotes her saying "I didn't intend to kill him … I just wanted him to pay attention to me." Move to Shooting of Andy Warhol. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 09:17, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

"I'm in the hospital now, but I'll be out soon, + when I get out I'll fix you good. I have a license to kill, you know, + you're one of my candidates." - Valerie Solanas in a letter to Barney Rosset

"I consider that a moral act. And I consider it immoral that I missed. I should have done target practice" - Valerie Solanas

Also shooting someone in the chest is generally the kind of thing you do when you want that person dead.

And I also don't think when you're at your sentencing hearing having pled down to assault you should declare that you were actually trying to murder him. TaqPCR (talk) 10:35, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

So even though she was not convicted of attempted murder and even though she directly stated that she was not intending to kill him, we should decide for ourselves that she was and declare that conclusion in our article title? Some people contradict themselves sometimes, and some people have mental issues. I don't think it is our job to prominently issue our independent verdict. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 13:52, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

So even though when she was freely able to state her intentions without personal cost she directly stated that her intent was to kill him (and that she ya know, shot him in the chest), we should ignore it because she didn't proclaim to the judge at a sentencing hearing after taking a plea bargain that she actually intended to kill him?

I suppose we should remove all the tags on the page about Karla Homolka that call her a murderer because she was only convicted of manslaughter and told the court she was an unwilling participant in the murders to get her plea bargain? TaqPCR (talk) 19:30, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

Straw man arguments are unlikely to sway consensus. 162 etc. (talk) 19:42, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

This isn't a strawman, it's the exact same scenario. Someone plead down to a lesser crime by admitting to the act but lying about their intent in committing the act. TaqPCR (talk) 22:00, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

Oppose attempted murder at least, because she wasn't convicted of murder and sources don't call it that. Shot would be OK but I prefer status quo, many sources call it an assassination attempt. Assassination attempts are also not always ideological - that is not part of the definition of assassination. PARAKANYAA (talk) 00:38, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

This argument doesn't make sense to me because assassination is a specific type of murder. So either we say she shot him because she wasn't convicted of attempted murder, we say she attempted to murder him because of her directly stating she wishes she had "not missed" (and ya know, shooting him), or we say attempted assassination as a more specific subset of attempted murder because some sources call it that (even though the most prominent biographer of Solanas, Fahs, calls it attempted murder) because it was political (it wasn't, it was petty personal reasons) or because it was for notoriety (debatable, there's some evidence for that but I think it's primarily personal). TaqPCR (talk) 06:35, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Oppose - per PARAKANYAA

ElhamHusey (talk) 01:12, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

TaqPCR makes a good case for "assassination" being an inaccurate term for this incident. That implies a political motivation. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:53, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose Since Warhol was a celebrity and therefore a public figure I think attempted assassination which is a term more closely associated with the attempted murder/killing of a celebrity or public figure makes sense.Agnieszka653 (talk) 04:41, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  Assassination as used in general parlance requires either the motivation to be political, or the victim to be a prominent political figure with their murder being used for notoriety. There is one single instance of the word actor on the page List of assassinations. Haing S. Ngor, because he was suspected to have been murdered because he wasn't just an actor but because he was a doctor that escaped from the Khmer Rouge and then acted in films critical of them. Meanwhile Solanas was an acquaintance of Warhol who attempted to murder him because he lost her play and she was mentally ill. TaqPCR (talk) 06:24, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  But it is used in common speech when talking about the event like this article: "Andy Warhol's Assassination Attempt" [] and this sentence from a Salon article: "Unlike so many retellings of famous assassinations, attempted or otherwise, Harron’s movie gets to the heart of its subject’s discontent without dwelling on dramatizations of Solanas’ fragile psyche." [] so I understand your argument (and great username by the way--I am a fan of TaqPCR) but it still seems to be a word used to describe this event that is widely recognized in American Cultural History. Agnieszka653 (talk) 06:30, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  There are a lot of sources that call it that but I think it's inaccurate and that wikipedia is contributing to that inaccuracy with this title. A lot of other sources say shot instead of assassination and the biographer Fahs who is cited extensively on Solanas's other pages calls it attempted murder. I don't believe it's an assasination because I don't beleive that Solanas attempted to murder Warhol because of his or her politics, nor do I believe that gaining notoriety was the primary goal, I believe the attempt on his live was because of petty personal reasons interpreted through the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic. To quote her "[there are false claims] I shot him because he wouldn't produce my play. It was for the opposite reason. He has a legal claim on my work." TaqPCR (talk) 06:50, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  That isn't inaccurate, assassination is just a killing of a prominent person. PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:32, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

  The word ordinarily implies that the reason the person is being killed is because of their prominence (or their political views or religion). If, for example, a person was killed by a mentally ill family member, one would not ordinarily call that an assassination. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 14:33, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

  There are a decent amount of non-politically motivated killings of famous people popularly being called assassinations. The murders of John Lennon, Jill Dando, Gianni Versace, and Tupac Shakur are all examples where they are often referred to as assassinations. Conversely, not every murder of a political figure is called an assassination on Wikipedia, as titling is usually based on common names in sources rather than specific vocabulary. Examples include the murders of Jo Cox and David Amess.

  In this case, I think Warhol’s shooting is referred to enough as an “assassination attempt” in sources that the current title is fine. Macxcxz (talk) 17:10, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  One thing that the deaths of John Lennon, Jill Dando, Gianni Versace, and Tupac Shakur have in common is that none of them have articles on Wikipedia entitled "Assassination of [Person's Name]". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:54, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  That isn’t my point. It doesn’t matter what their articles are titled, the point is that these are murders frequently called assassinations. Indeed, within the pages of all of those murders, with the exception of Versace, the word “assassination” in some form is used at least once to describe the killings. In the case of Versace, his killer, Andrew Cunanan, is categorised as an assassin, among other things. Really, the actual definition of “assassination” is largely irrelevant and subjective insofar as how much it applies to this particular case.

  Wikipedia titles should be based on the common name of a subject. With Warhol, the terms “shooting of” and “attempted assassination” are used interchangeably to describe his attack. There’s no especial reason to change the page’s name, as this shooting is popularly referred to as an assassination attempt. Macxcxz (talk) 18:49, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

  Murder of John Lennon, Jill Dando#Murder, Gianni Versace "Cause of death: Murder", Tupac Shakur#Murder and aftermath. TaqPCR (talk) 04:15, 5 May 2026 (UTC)