The magic of framing

Buffy from Farmington Hills writes:

Dear HEADSUP-L: This "framing" sounds like an awesome magic tool in the right hands. I sure hope nobody ever uses their his or her framing powers for evil ends! Because that would be like in that movie? When they were fighting? With wands? On the table? In the cafeteria? Except people would go through life with these confusing ...

Thanks for writing, Buffy. I'm sorry to tell you that some people do use their framing powers to advance their own unholy agendas. And the result is exactly what you predicted. The villagers' minds are clouded. They get correlations confused with causes. They march up to the castle and leave their habeas corpuses in the moat, because it's a mean, scary world* out there.

Here's what can happen. The nice wizard "Al" at the Poynter Institute saw a frame in a great big newspaper and hurried to tell his friends all about it. But it was a clever trap set by orcs! So this is what Al told his friends:

Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs as they are called in Iraq, pose a larger risk in the United States than you might think.

And all his friends were very scared and ran right to the elvish polling places and voted for the Party of Orcs and Balrogs Lincoln two, maybe three times each. When they found out, they fed Al to piping plovers. All because Al didn't check the frame for suspicious wires and lights before he shared it!

Safety first, kids. Wear eye protection and gloves when you're using any media effects theory, and never borrow other people's frames unless you read the label carefully. Remember what happened to Al.

*This is actually a whole nother theory, so put it back when you're done, OK?