The week's big news, and how's it's being spun.
May 31 1998 3:30 AM

Frame Game: Oregon Shootings.

36000_36259_spinicon

Springfield, Ore., buried two children killed by their classmate Kip Kinkel in last week's cafeteria massacre. Politicians and experts debated the meaning of it all. For a review of the arguments, click. (5/27/98)

William Saletan William Saletan

Will Saletan writes about politics, science, technology, and other stuff for Slate. He’s the author of Bearing Right.

36000_36259_spinicon
Advertisement

Voters in Northern Ireland approved a peace plan. Among other things, the plan appeases Catholics by including Northern Ireland in an all-Ireland council, and it appeases Protestants by abolishing the Irish Republic's constitutional claim to the majority Protestant North. Editorialists cheered the vote as a rejection of past violence and an embrace of peace and cooperation. Click for a dissection of the hype behind the vote. (5/26/98)

36000_36259_spinicon

Judge Norma Holloway Johnson ruled that Secret Service agents cannot refuse to testify before the Lewinsky grand jury about the president's behavior. She rejected the argument, advanced by the Secret Service and by President Clinton's surrogates, that this would endanger presidents by causing them to evade the Secret Service personnel who are supposed to protect them. (5/26/98)

36000_36259_spinicon

Pro-democracy parties won the first legislative elections in Hong Kong under Chinese rule. The naive spin: The democrats won. The half-sophisticated spin: The democrats get ripped off, because the Chinese rigged the election so that only half the legislature's seats were available. The rest are chosen by organizations from which most voters are excluded. The fully sophisticated spin: Despite getting ripped off, the democrats have secured a political base from which to harass and embarrass the Chinese. (5/26/98)

36000_36259_spinicon

The Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to a South Carolina child-endangerment law that has been used to prosecute pregnant women who imperil their fetuses by using illegal drugs. The challenge by pro-choice groups was based on narrow arguments, but the media are spinning the court's action as a victory for fetal rights. (5/26/98)

40000_40205_capaci
36000_36259_spinicon
Advertisement

Retired Chicago electrician Frank Capaci won the $195 million Powerball lottery. It's the biggest lottery jackpot in world history, though after taxes it turns out to be just about $54 million. The spins: 1) Capaci on the moral of the story--"All my life I worked and learned that I never got nothing for nothing" ... until the lottery proved him wrong. 2) To his adult children--"The only reason I played the lottery was to give you kids a lift in life." 3) Since the odds were 80 million-to-1 and everyone but Capaci lost, a Chicago math professor calls lotteries "a tax on the mathematically challenged."(5/22/98)

36000_36259_spinicon

Indonesia's President Suharto resigned. He turned over power to his vice president/crony, B.J. Habibie. Reactions: 1) Students cheered Suharto's resignation. 2) President Clinton praised the "peaceful transition." 3) Indonesia's stock market plummeted to a record low, signaling investors' jitters about Habibie's flaky economic ideas. (5/21/98)

36000_36259_spinicon

The Senate is debating Sen. John McCain's anti-tobacco bill. It would raise the price of cigarettes (thereby ostensibly discouraging youth smoking) by imposing half a billion dollars in fees on tobacco companies to support anti-smoking education, research, health care, and cessation programs. Thus far, critics have offered amendments to cap lawyers' fees (defeated) and increase the price hike (defeated). Pundits think the bill will pass overwhelmingly. For a review of the spin contest, click. (5/21/98)

36000_36259_spinicon

The House voted almost unanimously to ban new U.S.-China technology-transfer deals while President Clinton is in China next month. This marks the latest escalation of the Republican Party's campaign to condemn Clinton for allegedly promoting technology trade with China at the expense of national security. Speaker Gingrich says he will create a special committee to investigate the Chinese money scandal. For an analysis of the Republican spin campaign, click. (5/20/98)

36000_36259_spinicon

Eighty percent of pagers in the United States were knocked out by a satellite malfunction in space. The technophobic spin: This is what we get for relying on gadgets. The technophilic spin: "Thank God for cell phones."(5/20/98)