A counterpart frames and closes the local comparison
Develop a case, then close its local account with a brief comparison that names a counterpart and contrasts their treatment or consequences; repeat that closing role across otherwise separate cases.
It Didn't Start with Watergate
Victor Lasky · 23 weeksA counterpart frames and closes the local comparison
SHORT SOURCE EXCERPT“Colson went to jail.”
The paragraph introduces Colson’s later plea, describes the publicity Lasky attributes to Robert Kennedy’s campaign against Hoffa, then returns to Colson’s punishment in its final sentence. The counterpart frames and closes the local comparison.
The return to Colson’s punishment states the argumentative job of the preceding publicity account. Its placement before the move to Roy Cohn gives a local case an explicit comparison at the close, even though the counterpart has already been introduced.
The source in context.
The treatment of Hoffa, Cohn and Otepka becomes a series of precedents for conduct condemned under Nixon. Short returns to Colson, Ellsberg and later press practice repeatedly connect the cases to the book’s central question.
Open this chapterWhat this example supports
The return to Colson’s punishment states the argumentative job of the preceding publicity account. Its placement before the move to Roy Cohn gives a local case an explicit comparison at the close, even though the counterpart has already been introduced.
Its limit
The paragraph does not establish that the actors’ conduct, authority, evidence or legal circumstances were equivalent. A shared description of tactics cannot support that conclusion by itself.
Source & edition
Victor Lasky, It Didn't Start with Watergate, supplied text with The Dial Press, New York, 1977 title page.
Supplied text, lines 4831–4845. The short quotation is checked against the source.
Read the existing whole-source synthesis and all ten ordered segment summaries, section maps, qualifications and gap reports. Checked all 23 actual numbered chapter headings and their opening and closing passages, the complete narrative ending, and the Sources and Index boundaries. Read every retained example and its surrounding comparison, with the relevant chapter-source entries. Checked selected alternative candidates and author-position disclosures. Verified all ten consecutive source-input hashes and successful machine receipts. This is source-checked editorial review using the prior machine reading, not a new second full-book reading, independent model review or historical/legal fact audit. Private v2 revision rechecked the three retained passages and their source entries, two internal nonexamples, actual final prose and apparatus continuation under current source gates. It compared the proposal with all 46 canonical definitions at the recorded snapshot and reverified all ten complete source-input receipts. Earlier complete heading and ordered-report review is preserved; this bounded revision is not another full-book reading.
Supplied text with a title page naming The Dial Press, New York, 1977; separate copyright and digital-edition details not independently established.