HOWARD KURTZ WRITES that the press keeps telling Americans how “terrified” we are:

And yet, most people are going about their daily business. They have lived through so many stretches of media shrillness – abducted women, missing children, killer sharks – that it has become background noise. Repeated warnings about terrorism, and all the false alarms, have diluted their effectiveness. An orange alert becomes like a snow alert, just another fact of life.

Yes. Every time I see some anchor talk about how “frightened” and “jittery” we are, it just reminds me how out of touch Big Media people are.

We’re not “jittery.” Americans are determined, and angry. Spoiled media bigshots, used to living in a cocoon of bodyguards and obsequious staffers, are the ones who are “jittery.” We saw this in the overwrought reaction to the anthrax attacks last year, and we’re seeing it again.

The good news is that their shrillness, as Kurtz notes, actually works against the terrorists. They’ve managed to make terrorism boring.

As James Lileks writes:

The words TERROR ALERT: HIGH on the TV crawl annoy me, because I’m not terrorized. I’m wary and pissed off, but I’m not terrorized.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.