See No Evil

[Laughs] Well, bottom line, yes. What we have found, really broadly, is the higher level of punitiveness among political conservatives is really strongly associated with experiences, generally, of harsh punishment from childhood. It's not just going to be that they were spanked; there's a whole family climate, and punishment is just going to be one of those indicators of that. We have a whole chapter on the religious right. In our research we also found that when we gave people the statement "the amount of physical and sexual abuse in this country is greatly exaggerated by the mass media," conservatives were significantly more likely to agree with that.

That echoes the Inhofe comment that he was more "outraged by the outrage."

I think it has a lot of direct relevance for seeing what's going on in the reaction to these Iraqi prison [photos]. You know, Rush Limbaugh calling it a fraternity prank. You have Trent Lott yesterday [saying] that these are all exaggerated.

Is that a form of denial, though, or is that spin and interpretation?

Oh, absolutely. There's outright denial, but it's more subtle form is just minimization. There is a difficulty sometimes in being able to separate with public figures how much is actual denial in terms of their own belief and how much of it is political motivation in terms of spinning it and trying to alter people's perceptions. I can't say anything definitively that Rumsfeld is in denial or these guys are all in denial.

We get a lot of reader mail telling us to stop showing photos of the prison abuses and that they don't want to see pictures of coffins coming home. Is that another form of denial on the part of the public?