Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh

by Wendy S. Painting

On February 4, 1991, three thousand, five hundred people congregated around the White House to show support for the war and counter the growing numbers of anti-war protestors. According to Douglass Kellner, a critical component of the U.S. Gulf War propaganda machine involved the press pool system and the systematic exclusion of anti-war demonstrations or even dissenting opinions in news coverage. A study by media watchdog group FAIR found that only 29 of the 2,855 minutes of television coverage from August 8 to January 3, addressed opposition to U.S. military intervention in the Gulf. When the anti-war movement did receive coverage, it tended to be negative, depicted them as mobs of unruly anti-American terrorist sympathizers. Still, Kellner says that the night before the war began, 50% of Americans were opposed to it (New York Times. Jan. 26, 1991; Pantagraph Jan. 27, 1991; New York Times Feb. 4, 1991, A, F; Guardian Jan. 21, 1991; Wall Street Journal “Jan.22, 1991; Simpson 212; Kellner