Editor's Note: Obama's Communications Director Anita Dunn recently proclaimed Communist and Mass Murderer Mao Tse-Tung as one of her favorite political philosophers

President Barack Obama's communications director says it was Fox News Channel, not the White House, that picked a fight.

Yet it was Anita Dunn's words during a CNN interview last week, saying Fox is like "a wing of the Republican Party," that ignited one of the most unusual verbal volleys between a presidential administration and journalists since Vice President Spiro Agnew complained during the Nixon years about the "nattering nabobs of negativism."