Remember in 2000 when Richard Berke of the New York Times willingly knuckled under to Gore campaign pressure and made a big front-page deal about the word “rats” appearing subliminally for 1/30th of a second in a GOP ad, as if this was the height of incivility in politics?

This morning on “Today,” NBC’s Katie Couric brought visual aids to her “gee, Bush is in trouble” interview with gloomy Tim Russert: the latest attack ad from MoveOn.org, the Internet home of the Deanie Meanies. Their latest ad flashes the word LEADER in white across Bush’s face, and then adds in red the prefix MIS. There’s nothing subliminal about that. The President is a liar over your Raisin Bran.

And Couric announced so helpfully: “And as we look at background video, Tim, of an ad that’s being put out by a group called MoveOn. It was started by two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs frustrated by the political process. This drumbeat will be heard more and more loudly, don’t you think, in the weeks to come?”

It will if NBC airs their ads for free on the nation’s leading morning show and touts them as the public-opinion wave of the future. And calls them simply “entrepreneurs frustrated by the political process.” That nonideological title would have been nice if NBC applied it to Richard Mellon Scaife. Or they could have taken a page from their Scaife-scraping handbook and called MoveOn what they are: Clinton lovers or Bush haters. Take your pick, Katie.