On Poynter.org, Roy Peter Clark (if you lived in Hee-Haw country, you'd use your middle name, too) writes about the war networks' using "one of the oldest and most powerful narrative devices ever conceived," the countdown clock.
Jon Stewart also had a hi-larious piece about these clocks last night on TDS.
Update: On that note, here's how classics professor/kingmaker Donald Kagan--who headed the Project for the New American Century, the roadmap to Pax Americana we've been set upon, whether we know it or not--envisions the US in the 21st century: "You saw the movie High Noon? he asks. "We're Gary Cooper."
Hmm. If this Bush Doctrine (as it's now called) isn't repudiated, it'll be more like High Noon meets Groundhog Day.