The Culture of Fear (39 page)

3
Bob Herbert, “Bogeyman Economics,”
New York Times,
4 April 1997, p. A15; Doug Henwood, “Alarming Drop in Unemployment,”
Extra,
September 1994, pp. 16-17; Christopher Shea, “Low Inflation and Low Unemployment Spur Economists to Debate ‘Natural Rate’ Theory,”
Chronicle of Higher Education,
24 October 1997, p. A13.

4
Bob Garfield, “Maladies by the Millions,”
USA Today,
16 December 1996, p. A15.

5
Jim Windolf, “A Nation of Nuts,”
Wall Street Journal,
22 October 1997, p. A22.

6
Andrew Ferguson, “Road Rage,”
Time,
12 January 1998, pp. 64—68; Joe Sharkey, “You’re Not Bad, You’re Sick. It’s in the Book,”
New York Times,
28 September 1997, pp. N1, 5.

7
Malcolm Dean, “Flesh-eating Bugs Scare,”
Lancet
343 (4June 1994): 1418; “Flesh-eating Bacteria,”
Science
264 (17 June 1994): 1665; David Brown, “The Flesh-eating
Bug,”
Washington Post
National Edition, 19 December 1994, p. 34; Sarah Richardson, “Tabloid Strep,”
Discover
(January 1995): 71; Liz Hunt, “What’s Bugging Us,”
TheIndependent,
28 May 1994, p. 25; Lisa Seachrist, “The Once and Future Scourge,”
Science News
148 (7 October 1995): 234-35. Quotes are from Bernard Dixon, “A Rampant Non-epidemic,”
British Medical Journal
308 (11 June 1994): 1576-77; and Michael Lemonick and Leon Jaroff, “The Killers All Around,”
Time,
12 September 1994, pp. 62-69. More recent coverage: “Strep A Involved in Baby’s Death,” UPI, 27 February 1998; see also, e.g., Steve Carney, “Miracle Mom,”
Los Angeles Times,
4 March 1998, p. A6; KTLA, “News at Ten,” 28 March 1998.

8
Jim Naureckas, “The Jihad That Wasn‘t,”
Extra,
July 1995, pp. 6—10, 20 (contains quotes). See also Edward Said, “A Devil Theory of Islam,”
Nation,
12 August 1996, pp. 28-32.

9
Lewis Lapham, “Seen but Not Heard,”
Harper’s,
July 1995, pp. 29-36 (contains Clinton quote). See also Robin Wright and Ronald Ostrow, “Illusion of Immunity Is Shattered,”
Los Angeles Times,
20 April 1995, pp. A1, 18; Jack Germond and Jules Wit-cover, “Making the Angry White Males Angrier,” column syndicated by Tribune Media Services, May 1995; and articles by James Bennet and Michael Janofsky in the
New York Times,
May 1995.

10
Tom Morganthau, “The Lull Before the Storm?”
Newsweek,
4 December 1995, pp. 40-42; Mike Males, “Wild in Deceit,”
Extra,
March 1996, pp. 7-9;
Progressive,
July 1997, p. 9 (contains Clinton quote); Robin Templeton, “First, We Kill All the 11-Year-Olds,”
Salon,
27 May 1998.

11
Statistics from “Violence and Discipline Problems in U.S. Public Schools: 1996-97,” National Center on Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC, March 1998; CNN, “Early Prime,” 2 December 1997; and Tamar Lewin, “Despite Recent Carnage, School Violence Is Not on Rise,”
New York Times,
3 December 1997, p. A14. Headlines:
Time,
15 January 1996;
U
.
S
.
News & World Report,
25 March 1996; Margaret Carlson, “Children Without Souls,”
Time,
2 December 1996, p. 70. William J. Bennett, John J. DiIulio, and John Walters,
Body Count
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

12
CNN, “Talkback Live,” 2 December 1997; CNN, “The Geraldo Rivera Show,” 11 December 1997; Richard Lacayo, “Toward the Root of Evil,”
Time,
6 April 1998, pp. 38-39; NBC, “Today,” 25 March 1998. See also Rick Bragg, “Forgiveness, After 3 Die in Shootings in Kentucky,”
New York Times,
3 December 1997, p. A14; Maureen Downey, “Kids and Violence,” 28 March 1998,
Atlanta Journal and Constitution,
p. A12.

13
Jocelyn Stewart, “Schools Learn to Take Threats More Seriously,”
Los Angeles Times,
2 May 1998, pp. Al, 17; “Kindergarten Student Faces Gun Charges,”
New York Times,
11 May 1998, p. All; Rick Bragg, ‘Jonesboro Dazed by Its Darkest Day” and “Past Victims Relive Pain as Tragedy Is Repeated,”
New York Times,
18 April 1998, p. A7, and idem, 25 May 1998, p. A8. Remaining quotes are from Tamar Lewin, “More Victims and Less Sense in Shootings,”
New York Times,
22 May 1998, p. A20; NPR, “All Things Considered,” 22 May 1998; NBC, “Today,” 25 March 1998. See also Mike Males, “Who’s Really Killing Our Schoolkids,”
Los Angeles Times,
31 May 1998, pp. M1,
3; Michael Sniffen, “Youth Crime Fell in 1997, Reno Says,” Associated Press, 20 November 1998.

14
Overestimation of breast cancer: Willam C. Black et al., “Perceptions of Breast Cancer Risk and Screening Effectiveness in Women Younger Than 50,”
Journal of the National Cancer Institute
87 (1995): 720-31; B. Smith et al., “erception of Breast Cancer Risk Among Women in Breast and Family History of Breast Cancer,”
Surgery
120 (1996): 297-303. Fear and avoidance: Steven Berman and Abraham Wandersman, “ear of Cancer and Knowledge of Cancer,”
Social Science and Medicine
31 (1990): 81-90; S. Benedict et al., “reast Cancer Detection by Daughters of Women with Breast Cancer,”
Cancer Practice
5 (1997): 213-19; M. Muir et al., “ealth Promotion and Early Detection of Cancer in Older Adults,”
Cancer Oncology Nursing Journal
7 (1997): 82-89. For a conflicting finding see Kevin McCaul et al., “reast Cancer Worry and Screening,”
Health Psychology
15 (1996): 430-33.

15
Philip Jenkins,
Pedophilesand Priests
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), see esp. ch. 10; Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker,
Satan’s Silence
(New York: Basic Books, 1995), see esp. ch. 6; Jeffrey Victor, “he Danger of Moral Panics,”
Skeptic
3 (1995): 44-51. See also Noelle Oxenhandler, “he Eros of Parenthood,”
Family Therapy Networker
(May 1996): 17-19.

16
Mary De Young, “he Devil Goes to Day Care,”
Journal of American Culture
20 (1997): 19—25.

17
Dorothy Rabinowitz, “ Darkness in Massachusetts,”
Wall Street Journal,
30 January 1995, p. A20 (contains quote); “ack in Wenatchee” (unsigned editorial),
Wall
Street
Journal,
20 June 1996, p. A18; Dorothy Rabinowitz, “Justice in Massachusetts,”
Wall StreetJournal,
13 May 1997, p. A19. See also Nathan and Snedeker,
Satan’s Silence;
James Beaver, “The Myth of Repressed Memory,”
Journal
of
CriminalLawand Criminology
86 (1996): 596-607; Kathryn Lyon,
Witch Hunt
(New York: Avon, 1998); Pam Belluck, “‘Memory’ Therapy Leads to a Lawsuit and Big Settlement,”
New York Times,
6 November 1997, pp. Al, 10.

18
Elliott Currie,
Crime and Punishment in America
(New York: Metropolitan, 1998); Tony Pate et al.,
Reducing Fear of Crime in Houston and Newark
(Washington, DC: Police Foundation, 1986); Steven Donziger,
TheReal War on Crime
(New York: HarperCollins, 1996); Christina Johns,
Power, Ideology and the War on Drugs
(New York: Praeger, 1992); John Irwin et al., “Fanning the Flames of Fear,”
Crime and Delinquency
44 (1998): 32-48.

19
Steven Donziger, “Fear, Crime and Punishment in the U.S.,”
Tikkun
12 (1996): 24-27, 77.

20
Peter Budetti, “Health Insurance for Children,”
New England Journal ofMedicine
338 (1998): 541-42; Eileen Smith, “Drugs Top Adult Fears for Kids’ Well-being,”
USA
Today, 9 December 1997, p. D1. Literacy statistic: Adult Literacy Service.

21
“The State of America’s Children,” report by the Children’s Defense Fund, Washington, DC, March 1998; “Blocks to Their Future,” report by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, Washington, DC, September 1997; reports released in 1998 from the National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University, New York; Douglas Massey, “The Age of Extremes,”
Demography
33 (1996): 395—412; Trudy Lieberman, “Hunger in America,”
Nation,
30 March 1998, pp. 11-16; David
Lynch, “Rich Poor World,”
USA Today,
20 September 1996, p. B1; Richard Wolf, “Good Economy Hasn’t Helped the Poor,”
USA Today,
10 March 1998, p. A3; Robert Reich, “Broken Faith,”
Nation,
16 February 1998, pp. 11—17.

22
Inequality and mortality studies: Bruce Kennedy et al., “Income Distribution and Mortality,”
British Medical Journal
312 (1996): 1004-7; Ichiro Kawachi and Bruce Kennedy, “The Relationship of Income Inequality to Mortality,”
Social Science andMedicine
45 (1997): 1121-27. See also Barbara Chasin,
Inequality and Violence in the United States
(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997). Political stability: John Sloan, “The Reagan Presidency, Growing Inequality, and the American Dream,”
Policy Studies Journal
25 (1997): 371-86 (contains Reich quotes and “will haves” phrase). On both topics see also Philippe Bourgois,
In Search ofRespect:Selling Crack in El Barrio
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); William J. Wilson,
When Work Disappears
(New York, Knopf, 1996); Richard Gelles, “Family Violence,”
Annual Review of Sociology
11 (1985): 347-67; Sheldon Danziger and Peter Gottschalk,
America Unequal
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); Claude Fischer et al.,
Inequality by Design
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).

23
Mike Tharp and William Holstein, “Mainstreaming the Militia,”
U.S. News
&
World Report,
21 April 1997, pp. 24-37.

24
Burger King: “Notebooks,”
New Republic,
29 April 1996, p. 8. Statistics from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, Centers for Disease Control reports, and Timothy Egan, “Oregon Freeman Goes to Court,”
New York Times,
23 May 1998, pp. A1, 8.

25
Bill Thompson, “It’s Not Guns, It’s Killer Kids,”
Fort Worth Star-Telegram,
31 March 1998, p. 14; “Guns Aren’t the Problem,”
New York Post
30 March 1998 (from Post Web site); “Arkansas Gov. Assails ‘Culture of Violence,’” Reuters, 25 March 1998; Bo Emerson, “Violence Feeds ‘Redneck,’ Gun-Toting Image,”
Atlanta Journal and Constitution,
29 March 1998, p. A8; Nadya Labi, “The Hunter and the Choir Boy,”
Time,
6 April 1998, pp. 28-37; Lacayo, “Toward the Root of Evil.”

26
Alan Kerckhoff and Kurt Back,
TheJuneBug
(New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968), see esp. pp. 160-61.

27
Stephen Jay Gould,
Questioning the Millennium
(New York: Crown, 1997) ; Todd Gitlin, “Millennial Mumbo Jumbo,”
Los Angeles Times Book Review,
27 April 1997, p. 8.

28
Karen Frost, Erica Frank et al., “Relative Risk in the News Media,”
American Journal of Public Health
87 (1997): 842-45. Media-effects theory: Nancy Signorielli and Michael Morgan, eds.,
Cultivation Analysis
(Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990);Jennings Bryant and Dolf Zillman, eds.,
Media Effects
(Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1994); Ronald Jacobs, “Producing the News, Producing the Crisis,”
Media, Culture and Society
18 (1996): 373-97.

29
Madriz,
Nothing Bad Happens to Good Girls,
see esp. pp. 111-14; David Whitman and Margaret Loftus, “Things Are Getting Better? Who Knew,”
U
.
S
.
News & World Report,
16 December 1996, pp. 30-32.

30
Blendon and Young, “War on Illicit Drugs.” See also Ted Chiricos et al., “Crime, News and Fear of Crime,”
Social Problems
44 (1997): 342-57.

31
Steven Stark, “Local News: The Biggest Scandal on TV,”
Washington Monthly
(June 1997): 38—41; Barbara Bliss Osborn, “If It Bleeds, It Leads,”
Extra,
September-October 1994, p. 15; Jenkins,
Pedophiles and Priests,
pp. 68-71; “It’s Murder,”
USA Today,
20 April
1998, p. D2; Lawrence Grossman, “Does Local TV News Need a National Nanny?”
Columbia Journalism Review
(May 1998): 33.

32
Regarding fearmongering by newsmagazines, see also Elizabeth Jensen et al., “Consumer Alert,”
Brill’s Content
(October 1998): 130-47.

33
ABC, “20/20,” 16 March 1998.

34
Thomas Maugh, “Killer Bacteria a Rarity,”
Los Angeles Times,
3 December 1994, p. A29; Ed Siegel, “Roll Over, Ed Murrow,”
Boston Globe,
21 August 1994, p. 14. Crier quote from ABC’s “20/20,” 24 June 1994.

35
Sheryl Stolberg, “‘Killer Bug’ Perfect for Prime Time,”
Los Angeles Times,
15 June 1994, pp. A1, 30-31. Quotes from Brown, “Flesh-eating Bug”; and Michael Lemonick and Leon Jaroff, “The Killers All Around,” Time, 12 September 1994, pp. 62-69.

36
Lewin, “More Victims and Less Sense”; Tamar Lewin, “Study Finds No Big Rise in Public-School Crimes,”
New York Times,
25 March 1998, p. A18.

37
“Licensing Can Protect,”
USA Today,
7 April 1998, p. A11; Jonathan Kellerman, “Few Surprises When It Comes to Violence,”
USA Today,
27 March 1998, p. A13; Gary Fields, ‘Juvenile Homicide Arrrest Rate on Rise in Rural USA,”
USA Today
, 26 March 1998, p. A11; Karen Peterson and Glenn O’Neal, “Society More Violent, So Are Its Children,“
USA Today,
25 March 1998, p. A3; Scott Bowles, “Armed, Alienated and Adolescent,”
USA Today,
26 March 1998, p. A9. Similar suggestions about guns appear in Jonathan Alter, “Harnessing the Hysteria,”
Newsweek,
6 April 1998, p. 27.

38
Sharon Walsh, “Gun Sellers Look to Future—Children,”
Washington Post,
28 March 1998, pp. A1, 2.