On September 17, Bill Maher, host of ABC's Politically Incorrect, took issue with Bush's characterization of the hijackers as "cowards," saying that the label could more plausibly be applied to the U.S. military's long-range cruise missile attacks than to the hijackers' suicide missions. Maher, a hawk on military issues, intended his comment as a criticism of Bill Clinton's emphasis on air power over ground troops, but major advertisers, including Federal Express and Sears, dropped their sponsorship, and several ABC affiliate stations dropped Maher's show from their lineups (Washington Post, 9/28/01).

Commenting at an official news briefing, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer called Maher's remark "a terrible thing to say," adding, "There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is." The White House's transcript of Fleischer's remarks mysteriously omitted the chilling phrase "watch what they say," in what White House officials later called a "transcription error" (New York Times, 9/28/01).

--FAIR, Patriotism & Censorship, 2001

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

--George Orwell, 1984