If we hadn't seen her act so ridiculously before, I'd say this latest video was inconcievable.
I don't know who wrote the speech she read off a teleprompter (it's reflected in her glasses) in the video she released this morning; I don't even want to link to it.
But I'll quote the salient-to-this-diary point:
But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.
Sarah, "blood libel" does not mean what you seem to think it means.
Update: OMG! Rec list! Thank you so much, everyone! I'm trying to keep up with comments, but am heading out in about 20 minutes and will be back later this afternoon... Again, thanks!
Blood libel describes a horrible lie: the belief that Jews kill Christian children in order to make ritual use of their blood. The libel is nearly a thousand years old, and has been used by anti-Semites through the centuries to justify pogroms, massacres and the destruction of Jews.
For Ms Palin to use that phrase in a complaint about the media, in the aftermath of a mass murder where the primary target was a Jewish woman, is, to put it mildly, weird.
She can't possibly be this ignorant. Can she?
Updates
There's already a backlash regarding her choice of words (whether she wrote them or not, she did speak them so she must hold full responsibility for them).
Politico's Jennifer Epstein quotes 'Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based Democratic political consultant and devout Jew':
"The blood libel is something anti-Semites have historically used in Europe as an excuse to murder Jews – the comparison is stupid. Jews and rational people will find it objectionable. This will forever link her to the events in Tucson. It deepens the hole she’s already dug for herself... It’s absolutely inappropriate."
But it seems Sarah Palin wasn't the first from the right wing to use the term "blood libel" in connection with the coverage of her brutal map. Yesterday, conservative blog Human Events featured a post entitled "The Giffords Blood Libel Will Fail" but did not use the phrase in the article itself.
Glenn Reynolds also used the phrase in a WSJ piece earlier this week:
So as the usual talking heads begin their "have you no decency?" routine aimed at talk radio and Republican politicians, perhaps we should turn the question around. Where is the decency in blood libel?
Update at 9:40AM EST: And noted fictionalizer Andrew Brietbart used it in a twitterpost yesterday, and as of this moment, the term if trending on Twitter. CBS's Andrew Cohen tweet is the top tweet, Brietbart's is second. And Cohen also linked to
the hateful, deadly history of the blood libel-- from Encyclopedia Judaica: http://bit.ly/...
Jonah Goldberg posted this about an hour ago:
But I think that the use of this particular term in this context isn’t ideal. Historically, the term is almost invariably used to describe anti-Semitic myths about how Jews use blood — usually from children — in their rituals.
Wow, I actually agree with a Jonah Goldberg sentence. Two, actually. (Personally, I don't agree with his last sentences: I agree entirely with Glenn’s, and now Palin’s, larger point. But I’m not sure either of them intended to redefine the phrase, or that they should have. But he was on a roll there. The comments on his post are fascinating.
These right wing pundits and politicians have taken a phrase that means something devastatingly specific and twisted it to their own ends, and in this context - where a Jewish woman was targeted and shot through the head, and a child was killed, to have the phrase "blood libel" become another dog-whistle term for the right wing is disgustingly abhorrent.