(Mis)Labeling creating (Mis)Perceptions

Pages 445-6 of the textbook discuss how the perception of an event changes when the event is given a different label. The example in the textbook is how the terrorist act of September 11, 2001 would be viewed quite differently if described as "a crime against humanity".

This is a useful insight to guard oneself against misperceptions perpetrated by people who want to portray some acts or events in a different vein from what it really is, creating a "spin" on the event which may not agree with known facts.

Only recently, a fifth grader in Aurora, Colorado, was suspended for wearing a t-shirt saying, "Obama is a terrorist's best friend". While neither condemning nor condoning the actions of the school in suspending the fifth grader, I must say that it is quite a convenient untruth to say that Barack Obama, the presidential candidate, is the "best friend" of a terrorist. Are there real facts to support Obama being THE BEST FRIEND - a better friend than anyone else in the world, for at least one terrorist? It is quite obvious that the quote is hardly defensible as being true, and was written with the chief aim of being provocative in an irrational way.