Unfortunately, much of social science is pseudo-science - an attempt of ideologically motivated interests to disguise itself as "science." This is quite evident on this list - some people have no problem blaming warmongering for increased violence, but refuse to blame gangsta rap -even though both involve the same purported causal mechanism (legitimation of violence by authority/celebrity figures). Evidently "our thugs" can do no wrong, while "their thugs" can do no good. Unfortunately, this primitive tribal mentality dominates the US political discourse and spills over to social sciences.
Wojtek
^^^^^ CB; A weakness in your argument here is that it may be that orders of magnitudes more people think of the U.S. government as an authority figure/ "role model"/legitimizer than think of gangsta rappers as the same.