Two tales of memetic pathology

I have two stories that are essentially unrelated except that they came to my attention today:

The first story is that a Hardball guest says the NYT editor is guilty of treason. From ThinkProgress:

The White House has launched an assault on the New York Times for publishing a story about the administration’s secret program to monitor bank records. Yesterday, President Bush said the paper’s conduct was “disgraceful” and White House Press Secretary Tony Snow implied they were undermining Americans’ “right to live.”

The right-wing echo chamber is taking the argument a step further. Appearing on MSNBC’s Hardball, talk show host Melanie Morgan said that New York Times editor Bill Keller is guilty of treason and that “Keller and his associates” should be thrown “in prison for 20 years. Watch it.

[Via Atrios, who argues that this is the consequence of years of failure to stand up to GOP encroachments on journalism.]

In other news, Media Matters reports how Newsday's James Pinkerton says that the media frame Iraq coverage by portraying the U.S. military as "evil", "bad people", and "killers". Arguing that proper coverage would factor in the harsh realities of war, Pinkerton says:

[T]he correct frame, I believe, [...] it’s a minority view, but it’s correct, is [exemplified by a] fellow named Gary Brecher, who writes a [...] column called “War Nerd” for a Russian magazine online. And he makes the point, “Look, this is a war. What do you expect? This is not a police action, this is not a humanitarian mission. This is a war, and you’re going to get Hadithas.”

Unfortunately, as Sadly No! points out, War Nerd is a parody. Another passage from War Nerd states the following:

I’m a war nerd. A backseat sergeant. I know what I am. All I have to do is look down at the keyboard and there’s my hairy white gut slopping over it, and there’s crumbs between the keys from the fake homemade soft’n'chewy big cookies in the vending machine downstairs.

So why am I calling attention to this? The reason is that I think these are two distinct symptoms of serious late-stage memetic pathology settling into our collective psyche. On the one hand, it is now a matter of serious debate to discuss whether a story on the invasion of privacy and related abuses by our elected government constitutes treason, and on the other, there are people who are seriously advocating positions that are so extreme that they exceed the realm of parody.

We're circling the drain, folks.