Yes, be on the lookout for this activity. Try to analyze a situation and predict the application of this Alinsky rule. An excellent example: Juan Williams on Fox Sunday, the morning after Palin spoke to a Tea Party convention. If you were aware of this "rule", you were expecting it when Juan attacked the Tea Party by immediatly naming Palin "the leader of the Tea Party" and proceeding to attack her. They are very effective at this technique and need to be called on it's use. The MSM won't do so; they use the same technique.
Long before I ever heard of Alinsky, I recognized the tactic. It was used on Newt Gingrich when he was promoting Contract with America. Unfortunately, he crumpled before the attack.
I recognized it because I used to listen to Radio Moscow back during the Cold War, and became very familiar with their propaganda techniques.
What amazes me is not that the tactic is used, but that so many people fall for it, both as targets and as observers. Newt, for example, backed down, seemingly agreeing that he had been too harsh. He should have stood up to it.
For instance--Jon Stewart, how about we learn about his personal life? Any hypocrisy there? Where does the cool factor come from? Can we warm it up for him? (Jon's chief shtick, besides the Fbonb, is highlighting hypocrisies of the right, real and manufactured.) He's very influential among the mouth-breathing stoners who helped put O into office. Let's pick him, freeze him, personalize him and polarize him. Time for some opposition research. I hear he's got family connections to Bernie Madoff. And he's just one possibility. And Joy Behar--where did she come from, how did anyone so unattractive and unpleasant get a show?
And how about that teabag-sucking Anderson Cooper, who was so instrumental in popularizing an ugly epithet to the partiers?
I'd like to shove some Alinsky down their gullets, or other orifices.