the thing we have to worry about is not the effect on crazy people. it's the effect on normal people. and the thing i worry about is not rhetoric. it's the construction of paranoid narratives. when respected people say that the foreign policy of the bush administration is controlled by a tiny cabal of jews who are aligning the country into war, that -- no matter how politely you say that, that is a false paranoid narrative. and in the same way when people say that barack obama's deliberately trying to destroy the economy of the united states in order to lead us to overthrow the constitution, lead us to a marxist dictatorship, again, you can say that without a single harsh syllable or negative adjective but it's a false and paranoid narrative. and that attacks the governance of the country. and in that sense i would say yes, there have been comparable degrees of paranoia but sequentially, not at the same time. >> i'm struck, lauren ashburn, by the way everybody in the media, most people in the media, say they're for civility but in the next breath they say yes, but we have to respond to the outrages and lies on the other side, fox, msnbc, rush, you name it. >> right. i have to say that i completely