the "enemy within" rhetoric

* sargeant:

"The funny part about all this is that the people trying to depict the media as traitorous are the ones who are really weakening the country. They're dumbing it down and desensitizing people to hysterical accusations. Yet no matter how transparent the agenda of these critics, no matter how obvious their goal of distracting the electorate with "enemy within" rhetoric, the big news orgs continue to help them legitimize their cynical efforts to drum up hysteria. As a result these critics and commentators just might succeed. That is, if they haven't in some measure already succeeded."

* there's a 5 min NPR interview with jane mayer about her addington piece (which i havent read)

* jiminycricket in the comments:

"My partner works for a local fox news station and told me something very revealing the other day about the public's reaction to Fox.

One of their on-air talent doesn't want to do any man-on-the-street interviews anymore because steadily over the last 6 months the public has gotten very hostile towards the Fox crew. Doesn't matter what the story is about (even non-political stories) once people realize they are from Fox, they either refuse to talk to them or bitch them out. The on-air talent that related this said he sometimes feared that him or his crew would get assaulted.

My partner told me that what really surprised him was the reaction of co-workers to this - who were pretty much in agreement with the public sentiment and laughed and said "good for them"."

its funny. till someone gets hurt, or a war gets started.