HOMEWORK HELP!!!!

I just found out tonight that I have an essay due in the morning. The prompt is:

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For this final assignment, write an essay in which you present your own example, a story about a conflict or crime, as a way of exploring the issue of violence and of getting behind the official story. The event you choose to examine should be contemporary, something that happened in your lifetime. To gain access to what Scott calls the public transcript, you will need to examine and draw on news reports and media coverage of the event. How did community members, politicians, and family respond? What were the stories people told about what happened? In what ways did people rely on narrative clichs to explain the event? Which aspects of the story were largely neglected by the press, and what do you make of these omissions?

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I'm drawing a blank, anybody have any good events where the public view was different than the actual event? (Please no War with Iraq)JustinC

JustinCyI am not certain if this will be within all the requirements but I would try the Jonestown nass suicide.I picked this one off the web.Rice University -- Web ServicesLet me know if this is ok

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(Please no War with Iraq)

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Well, there goes the obvious one. You could always go into the 2000 election (a conflict). The biggest stories of the election (such as the "felon lists") were hardly even reported. Although, there's no violence, which I think is the key point here. Hmm... Well, the DC sniper is a classic case of bad media coverage, where the media took bullet points (like the one description of the vehicle), and their obsession with it led them to not even report when the description of the actual vehicle was released. Going back further, you can always check FAIR's archives - they're a a media watchdog group - and see if anything in there gives you ideas.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

You could try the attitude that the Ronald Reagan presidency was a wonderful economic time.The deficit tripled...if it weren't for the merely the interest on the Reagan/Bush debt, the budget would have been balanced in 1994.John Rutledge and Deborah Allen said, "The US economy in the 1980s was the most incredible job-creating machine the world has ever seen."This is patently false. The job growth rate per year for the past few presidents:Johnson: 3.8%
Carter: 3.1%
Kennedy: 2.3%
Nixon: 2.3%
Reagan: 2.1%
Bush: 0.6%And when we do more analysis, we find that Reagan's numbers are inflated due to the number of public-sector jobs created.Oh, and another big lie is that Clinton passed the largest tax increase in US history. That is simply not true. Bush, Sr. did.So depending on how you want to frame it, it might come down to the popular concept that the Republicans are better for the economy. History shows us that it is clearly the other way around: The economy does better under a Democratic administration than a Republican one.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Out of curiousity, Rrhain, do you read (the former) Steve Kangas?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Thanks for the help guys. That Jonestown incident is about 5 years before my time, so I don't think I can use it, though I may if it is 2 in the morning and I have nothing to write about yet.And it does need to be a violent act I think.I said no war in Iraq because it seems like too complicated a subject for a 6 page paper, but I might think about it again. Can anybody suggest specific things that were/ are being misrepresented and have some resources about it?What about the War on Terror? Is the media downplaying the religious conflict or anything like that?I also found several resources on abortion clinic bombings, though I don't know how I could "spin" it to fit the prompt. Does anyone know of any active pro-life religious groups that tried to alienate the bombers as 'extremists', but meanwhile they use rhetoric that would influence people to perform violent acts? Did the media downplay the role that mainstream fundamentalist christianity played in the bombings?Any other violent acts you could think of?I am frantically looking stuff up also, just so you guys don't think that i'm trying to get out of doing work.JustinC

Rei,Nope...but it looks like he and I have read some of the same sources. His job growth table looks like mine. I left out Clinton since that number is only for his first term and I wanted to compare Reagan to his predecessors.One interesting stat about supply-side economics is that before it was enacted, literally only 12 members of the 18,000 member American Economic Association thought it could work. Bush, Jr. has made rumblings of trying to resurrect it and Schwarzenegger's budget man during his campaign was a supporter of supply-side.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

OK...how about that Reagan and Bush and North were innocent of the Iran-Contra charges? Or is supplying weapons to players in a war not violent enough?Um, you could try Waco and David Koresh. Many people still think that the BATF started the fire deliberately.Oh! It got it! It's been sitting in the back of my head and I just heard it:Columbine. The story of Cassie Bernall. She's the one that everybody thinks, and her parents wrote a book about, was asked "Do you believe in god?" and when she said yes, she was shot. But according to Emily Wyant, who was right next to Bernall under a table, that isn't true. The two were hiding, Bernall started to cry, "Dear god, dear god, why is this happening? I just want to go home!" Dylan Klebold then slammed his hand on the table, shouted out, "Peekaboo," looked underneath the table, and shot Bernall without saying anything.However, the general exchange did take place...between Klebold and Valeen Schnurr. Klebold asked her if she believed in god, Schnurr answered yes, and Klebold left her alone.The popular opinion that the Columbine massacre was carried out by people who hated Christians and that people were killed for being Christian simply isn't true.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Thanks for the help guys. The Columbine one would of been good, I don't know why I didn't think of that. I ended up writing a paper about Dr. David Gunn-the first doctor to be killed by anti-abortionist protesters. It loosely follows the prompt, but eh, it's over with.JustinC

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Um, you could try Waco and David Koresh. Many people still think that the BATF started the fire deliberately.

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This may be a big tangent, but I saw a pretty damn convincing videotape. You know, the one where the tank with the flamethrower sets the compound on fire?I don't know the original source, and the guy who let me see the tape didn't want to talk much about it, but there are two main possibilities that I see:1. Somebody really did drive a tank up and torch the building, and it was caught on tape (along with some shots of the initial assault and other moments).
2. Somebody made an elaborate replica of the entire Branch Davidian compound and made a fairly long videotape (as I recall, at least half an hour) of people in ATF and other government costumes attacking it, laying siege to it (while never once appearing genuinely afraid of anyone who might be inside) and eventually burning it down with the use of armored vehicles that are rather difficult to buy privately.I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but this was a hell of a video to imagine somebody faking. A great deal of work would have been involved. This footage is not a big secret, and is mentioned by Bill Hicks on "Rant in E Minor," with which several other members are probably familiar. He said it made public access TV but no major networks.

There's another possibility, zephyr:Somebody with no expertise in analysis of this type of situation made a tape of genuine footage and, using fallacious reasoning, managed to convince someone else who also has no expertise in analysis of this type of situation of his claims.There's even a fourth possibility: Somebody who does have some expertise got lost in fantasy of his own making and, using poor methodology, made a tape that only supplied evidence supporting his position and ignoring all contradictory information and managed to convince someone else who has no expertise in analysis of this type of situation of his claims (sound familiar?)The thing you have failed to justify is that the tank ramming the building had anything to do with the fire.

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I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but this was a hell of a video to imagine somebody faking.

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Who said anything about faking it? Take a look at all the conspiracy theories surrounding the moon landing. The footage they use is genuine, but that doesn't mean they're analyzing it correctly. They show you the actual footage of the astronauts planting the flag on the moon and they say that because it waves, that proves that there was air and thus, the moon landing was hoaxed. It never occurs to them that the reason the flag is standing up at all is because there was a rod along the top and that the "waving" is due to the fact that the astronauts are shoving the pole around, trying to get it planted into the ground. As soon as they let go, the flag stops moving.Have you considered the possibility that you are not in a position to make a valid judgement? What do you really know about structural engineering, volatile chemicals, military tactics, and the specifics of the Waco case?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

I will admit that my knowledge is incomplete. However, the footage shows the tank backing away from a building, flamethrower still pumping into the hole made by the barrel, after which the fire spreads to the entire compound and consumes it. That relationship is established, if the footage is genuine.The fact that this scenario is so similar to the official story suggests that one is based on the other. Again, footage being genuine, I would lean toward the official story being a plausible lie, placed as close to the truth as possible while still shifting the burden of guilt. I neither inherently trust nor distrust the federal government and the mass media. I only point out that it would be easy to twist this story and that what I saw, _if_ verified (yes, it is a big unknown IF) would be convincing evidence that it actually occurred.Here are some links to discussion of the the footage and raid in general. There is some doubt about the specific video to which I refer, but far more concerns about the honesty of what was reported about the case.http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/09/msg00250.html
The Skeptic Files - SkepticFiles Setting
http://www.mindpollen.com/book/conspir2.htm

I saw a TV show about this, lo these many years ago, and it turns out the tape is edited to be deliberately misleading.See, they use a segment, but they cut out of it a few frames early - if you continue the tape from the original footage, you see that what looks like a flamethrower's fire spray is actually a piece of shiny wall. It falls off the tank in the next couple of seconds.Why would the ATF use a flamethrower to deal with a hostage situation? Even the Russians, who can be generally counted on to act with a miminum concern for human life, pump dangerous sleeping gases into hostage situations. They don't burn down the theatre.Anyway the FLIR images are pretty conclusive. The fires started at the interior of the compound and spread outward, not the other way around.So, yeah. It's a real video, but it doesn't show what you think it does.

Figures.

Does anyone know where I can get good (detailed to semi-detailed) information on the different types of abortion procedures?Basically once if I can't find one on Google I'm helpless, and I can't really find a good one.Thanks