Sarah Palin's 'blood libel' blunder

[CHIMO]

Tea Party favourite Sarah Palin brands the linking of her rhetoric and 'crosshairs' map with the shootings in Arizona as 'blood libel'. Link to this video The sense of victimhood of the Tea Party and its fellow travellers should now be well known. It was Glenn Beck, after all – the man who accused America's first African American president of being "racist" – who last year told a rally of his followers in Washington that they had taken on the mantle of the civil rights movement.

Now Sarah Palin, former vice presidential candidate, has repeated this same repellent inversion, accusing those who criticised her for her violent political rhetoric against Gabrielle Giffords, the congresswoman shot in Arizona on Saturday, of perpetrating a "blood libel" against her. In using that expression, Palin has appropriated a phrase with a specific meaning in the long history of hate crime against the Jewish people.

First mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew to refer to the supposed Jewish guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus, over the centuries it came to mean something even more pernicious: the fraudulent claim that Jews used the blood of murdered children in their rituals. More awful still, perhaps, is the context in which Palin has adopted the language: to recast herself as the victim in defending herself from claims that her language and behaviour may have helped create the context for the attempted murder of a congresswoman who, in fact, is Jewish.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/12/sarahpalin-arizona-shooting-blood-libel

[KILL THE WISE ONE]

1. she is almost as in-artful with the english language as Bush

[NewJeffCT]

3. With Bush

I never considered him stupid - a poor speaker, yes. Lazy, yes. As smart as I want a president to be? No way. But, not stupid.

Palin I consider an idiot.

[Lucky Luciano]

6. Hah! I think you are spot on! nt

[The Wizard]

8. Many of Bush's verbal stumble were deliberate

The idiot act made many of his statements plausibly deniable.
My favorite was when he said Iraq was never about staying the course after saying it constantly for a year. The media never uttered a word about it.

[NewJeffCT]

2. Great editorial, but it's a UK newspaper

who also brought up the RW violent rhetoric & Palin when the Giffords shooting first happened...

Will this get any play here in the US?

[DCKit]

4. Please tell me that cartoon accompanied the original article. nt

[CHIMO]

5. No

It was on the same page.

[CaptiveMind]

7. Gibson's Blood Libel By Charles Krauthammer

His Leni Riefenstahl defense -- I had other intentions -- does not wash. Of course he had other intentions: evangelical, devotional, commercial. When you retell a story in which the role of the Jews is central, and take care to give it the most invidious, pre-Vatican II treatment possible, you can hardly claim, "I didn't mean it."

Washington Post, Friday, March 5, 2004; Page A23

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A31980-2004Mar4¬Found=true

[Enthusiast]

9. Charles Krauthammer is a right wing piece of filth.

He belongs right there with Sarah Palin and the rest of the fascists.

[mercuryblues]

11. Yet,

he defends sarah's use of the term to make her the victim. Disguting.

[Delphinus]

10. Welcome to DU, CaptiveMind.

:hi: