Absolutely amazing! Infernally incredible! And yet another "refudiation" (putatively) that the American audience has one single grain of sense or intellect! What is this? Well, Sarah Palin's recent invocation of the term "blood libel" as a way to portray her and other conservatives' victimization following the Tucson shooting.
Now, focus on this: Even as Dem congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords lay comatose in her ICU bed, with half of her skull removed because brain swelling from her head wound threatened to kill her, and twenty people shot with six killed, little Miss Sarah bloviates from a recent Facebook page video that SHE is the principal victim of the shooting! If anyone doesn’t believe this mawkish turn, watch the video of her purported victimization she posted to her Facebook page.
And note her invocation of the loaded term, "blood libel".
To quote the words of blogger William Rivers Pitt:
“There she sits, in front of a fireplace and beside an American flag like some cruel joke on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, wreathing herself in pity because people are coming to the conclusion that politicians like her - the ones who have spent the last two years talking about guns and civil war and reloading and such - should bear some of the blame for what happened in Arizona.”
Worse and most egregious is Palin’s invocation of the “blood libel” theme, which has not one iota of relevance to any accusations made against her. “Blood libel” has a specific historical meaning and applies to a specific people: the Jews. It does not in any way, shape or form apply to Palin’s critics calling her out for placing rifle cross-hairs on a map showing Dem candidates districts before the mid terms. Or calling out other conservatives and Tea Party whackos for portraying Obama as Hitler, and munching bullshit phrases like "the Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants" while toting weapons to Obama health care events last year.
From the New York Times:
"The term blood libel is generally used to mean the false accusation that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals, in particular the baking of matzos for Passover. That false claim was circulated for centuries to incite anti-Semitism and justify violent pogroms against Jews. Ms. Palin's use of the phrase in her video, which helped make the video rapidly go viral, is attracting criticism, not least because Ms. Giffords, who remains in critical condition in a Tucson hospital, is Jewish."
In other words, "blood libel" is recognized as a scurrilous slander on an entire PEOPLE through history. In more recent times it was spread by the German Volkisch movement and incorporated in Nazi hate speech to reinforce and foment the need for a "final solution". This was done along with propaganda films prepared by Josef Goebbels, showing German Jews in alternating segments interchanged with masses of breeding rats. The idea was to sow in German minds the Jews were vermin, at root. "Blood libel" played the same role in this abominable campaign as Goebbels nasty films!
To adopt the term as a way of portraying liberals' criticism of conservatives for their recent hate speech (including Palin's own placing of rifle cross-hairs over maps of Dem congressional districts) is therefore to commit an affront to language, understanding and logic - showing as much respect for the use of language as Orwell's "Big Brother" did in the novel, 1984. And yet some, like Christopher Caldwell - Editor of the Conservative Weekly Standard- wrote that Palin had actually "fought to a draw" two stalwarts: Andrew Sullian (former President of the Oxford Student Union) and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman. In fact, Caldwell is a blinking idiot since Palin didn't even manage to get to the point of mounting a premise, far less an argument! But leave it to the wingnut press and its hacks to defend her foolishness.
Interestingly, Palin’s “blood libel” use isn’t even original. She lifted it from a Wall Street Journal headline and article by right-wing columnist Glenn Harlan Reynolds. So she’s unoriginal, as well as insensitive to the plight of a whole people. Worse, hack Reynolds came back to actually defend Palin's use of the term asserting it applied because libs were trying to hang murder on a whole group of people: conservatives!
NO WE WERE NOT! What we were saying, with numerous examples cited, is that violent rhetoric on the part of the Right played a direct role in creating the atmosphere in which an off kilter mind could act. Further, conservatives do not represent one PEOPLE or race- like the Jews slandered under the "blood libel" tag. Rather they hail from numerous backgrounds and races: there can be black conservatives (like Michael Steele, recently fired from the RNC) just like there can be Catholic conservatives, like William Donahue).
Palin's deliberate misuse of the term reminded me of a kid in my High school Government class who repeatedly misused the specific term "Laissez faire", asserting it meant a "free for all" when it meant nothing of the sort. Words and phrases with specific meanings, when abused and misused, deform thought itself and represent a form of "collateral language" or damage to the language which extends to damage of thought since language is the vehicle of thought.
Just as fatuous have been Sarah's efforts to try to escape and flee from the original intent of her words. Now that damage has actually been wrought, in Ms. Gifford's severe wounding, little miss Sarah wants to backpedal, for example saying that when she used the term "take up our arms,' we are talking about our vote."
Well, then why not say "Take up our vote!" Why instead say or use loaded language like "re-load" and "re-arm"? Well, because she knows (like all conservatives) that the more temperate language won't have the same effect! It's too placid, too tame for their needs, to arouse their minions to fury. Same thing with putting obvious rifle cross-hairs all over a map of congressional districts, then claiming they are "surveyors's symbols". What, does she think most Americans are idiots? Or just fools?
What do various Jewish groups have to say about her use of "blookd libel"? From the wires:
The National Jewish Democratic Council said:
"Instead of dialing down the rhetoric at this difficult moment, Sarah Palin chose to accuse others trying to sort out the meaning of this tragedy of somehow engaging in a 'blood libel' against her and others. This is of course a particularly heinous term for American Jews, given that the repeated fiction of blood libels are directly responsible for the murder of so many Jews across centuries — and given that blood libels are so directly intertwined with deeply ingrained anti-Semitism around the globe, even today. "
Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a pro-Israel lobbying group that has criticized the hawkish policies of the current Israel government, wrote:
"We hope that Sarah Palin will recognize, when it is brought to her attention, that the term 'blood libel' brings back painful echoes of a very dark time in our communal history when Jews were falsely accused of committing heinous deeds. When Mrs. Palin learns that many Jews are pained by and take offense at the use of the term, we are sure that she will choose to retract her comment, apologize and make a less inflammatory choice of words."
And Simon Greer of the Jewish Funds for Justice declared:
"We are deeply disturbed by Fox News commentator Sarah Palin's decision to characterize as a 'blood libel' the criticism directed at her following the terrorist attack in Tucson. The term 'blood libel' is not a synonym for 'false accusation.' It refers to a specific falsehood perpetuated by Christians about Jews for centuries, a falsehood that motivated a good deal of anti-Jewish violence and discrimination. Unless someone has been accusing Ms. Palin of killing Christian babies and making matzoh from their blood, her use of the term is totally out-of-line. [...]
Even some conservative commentators, like Jonah Goldberg, have criticized Palin for her over the top rhetoric and noted that while Limbaugh and Beck also resort to this incendiary speech, they are not out there passing themselves off as possible future leaders. Palin would do well to notch back that rhetoric and instead of "re-arming it" she needs to disarm it - that is, if she truly feels she's a presidential contender for 2012.
Now, focus on this: Even as Dem congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords lay comatose in her ICU bed, with half of her skull removed because brain swelling from her head wound threatened to kill her, and twenty people shot with six killed, little Miss Sarah bloviates from a recent Facebook page video that SHE is the principal victim of the shooting! If anyone doesn’t believe this mawkish turn, watch the video of her purported victimization she posted to her Facebook page.
And note her invocation of the loaded term, "blood libel".
To quote the words of blogger William Rivers Pitt:
“There she sits, in front of a fireplace and beside an American flag like some cruel joke on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, wreathing herself in pity because people are coming to the conclusion that politicians like her - the ones who have spent the last two years talking about guns and civil war and reloading and such - should bear some of the blame for what happened in Arizona.”
Worse and most egregious is Palin’s invocation of the “blood libel” theme, which has not one iota of relevance to any accusations made against her. “Blood libel” has a specific historical meaning and applies to a specific people: the Jews. It does not in any way, shape or form apply to Palin’s critics calling her out for placing rifle cross-hairs on a map showing Dem candidates districts before the mid terms. Or calling out other conservatives and Tea Party whackos for portraying Obama as Hitler, and munching bullshit phrases like "the Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants" while toting weapons to Obama health care events last year.
From the New York Times:
"The term blood libel is generally used to mean the false accusation that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals, in particular the baking of matzos for Passover. That false claim was circulated for centuries to incite anti-Semitism and justify violent pogroms against Jews. Ms. Palin's use of the phrase in her video, which helped make the video rapidly go viral, is attracting criticism, not least because Ms. Giffords, who remains in critical condition in a Tucson hospital, is Jewish."
In other words, "blood libel" is recognized as a scurrilous slander on an entire PEOPLE through history. In more recent times it was spread by the German Volkisch movement and incorporated in Nazi hate speech to reinforce and foment the need for a "final solution". This was done along with propaganda films prepared by Josef Goebbels, showing German Jews in alternating segments interchanged with masses of breeding rats. The idea was to sow in German minds the Jews were vermin, at root. "Blood libel" played the same role in this abominable campaign as Goebbels nasty films!
To adopt the term as a way of portraying liberals' criticism of conservatives for their recent hate speech (including Palin's own placing of rifle cross-hairs over maps of Dem congressional districts) is therefore to commit an affront to language, understanding and logic - showing as much respect for the use of language as Orwell's "Big Brother" did in the novel, 1984. And yet some, like Christopher Caldwell - Editor of the Conservative Weekly Standard- wrote that Palin had actually "fought to a draw" two stalwarts: Andrew Sullian (former President of the Oxford Student Union) and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman. In fact, Caldwell is a blinking idiot since Palin didn't even manage to get to the point of mounting a premise, far less an argument! But leave it to the wingnut press and its hacks to defend her foolishness.
Interestingly, Palin’s “blood libel” use isn’t even original. She lifted it from a Wall Street Journal headline and article by right-wing columnist Glenn Harlan Reynolds. So she’s unoriginal, as well as insensitive to the plight of a whole people. Worse, hack Reynolds came back to actually defend Palin's use of the term asserting it applied because libs were trying to hang murder on a whole group of people: conservatives!
NO WE WERE NOT! What we were saying, with numerous examples cited, is that violent rhetoric on the part of the Right played a direct role in creating the atmosphere in which an off kilter mind could act. Further, conservatives do not represent one PEOPLE or race- like the Jews slandered under the "blood libel" tag. Rather they hail from numerous backgrounds and races: there can be black conservatives (like Michael Steele, recently fired from the RNC) just like there can be Catholic conservatives, like William Donahue).
Palin's deliberate misuse of the term reminded me of a kid in my High school Government class who repeatedly misused the specific term "Laissez faire", asserting it meant a "free for all" when it meant nothing of the sort. Words and phrases with specific meanings, when abused and misused, deform thought itself and represent a form of "collateral language" or damage to the language which extends to damage of thought since language is the vehicle of thought.
Just as fatuous have been Sarah's efforts to try to escape and flee from the original intent of her words. Now that damage has actually been wrought, in Ms. Gifford's severe wounding, little miss Sarah wants to backpedal, for example saying that when she used the term "take up our arms,' we are talking about our vote."
Well, then why not say "Take up our vote!" Why instead say or use loaded language like "re-load" and "re-arm"? Well, because she knows (like all conservatives) that the more temperate language won't have the same effect! It's too placid, too tame for their needs, to arouse their minions to fury. Same thing with putting obvious rifle cross-hairs all over a map of congressional districts, then claiming they are "surveyors's symbols". What, does she think most Americans are idiots? Or just fools?
What do various Jewish groups have to say about her use of "blookd libel"? From the wires:
The National Jewish Democratic Council said:
"Instead of dialing down the rhetoric at this difficult moment, Sarah Palin chose to accuse others trying to sort out the meaning of this tragedy of somehow engaging in a 'blood libel' against her and others. This is of course a particularly heinous term for American Jews, given that the repeated fiction of blood libels are directly responsible for the murder of so many Jews across centuries — and given that blood libels are so directly intertwined with deeply ingrained anti-Semitism around the globe, even today. "
Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a pro-Israel lobbying group that has criticized the hawkish policies of the current Israel government, wrote:
"We hope that Sarah Palin will recognize, when it is brought to her attention, that the term 'blood libel' brings back painful echoes of a very dark time in our communal history when Jews were falsely accused of committing heinous deeds. When Mrs. Palin learns that many Jews are pained by and take offense at the use of the term, we are sure that she will choose to retract her comment, apologize and make a less inflammatory choice of words."
And Simon Greer of the Jewish Funds for Justice declared:
"We are deeply disturbed by Fox News commentator Sarah Palin's decision to characterize as a 'blood libel' the criticism directed at her following the terrorist attack in Tucson. The term 'blood libel' is not a synonym for 'false accusation.' It refers to a specific falsehood perpetuated by Christians about Jews for centuries, a falsehood that motivated a good deal of anti-Jewish violence and discrimination. Unless someone has been accusing Ms. Palin of killing Christian babies and making matzoh from their blood, her use of the term is totally out-of-line. [...]
Even some conservative commentators, like Jonah Goldberg, have criticized Palin for her over the top rhetoric and noted that while Limbaugh and Beck also resort to this incendiary speech, they are not out there passing themselves off as possible future leaders. Palin would do well to notch back that rhetoric and instead of "re-arming it" she needs to disarm it - that is, if she truly feels she's a presidential contender for 2012.
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