Blaming the media by using an anti-semitic slur in the wake of the attempted assassination of a Jewish congresswoman! That woman is even dumber and less sensitive than we thought. Amazing.
Think Progress reports that Jewish groups are denouncing Sarah Palin's usage of the term "blood libel." As most of you doubtlessly know, "blood libel" refers to the anti-Semitic claim that Jews use the blood of Christian babies to make matzoh. Such claims have been used to murder hundreds of Jews.
From the Jewish lobbying group, J Street:
J Street is saddened by Governor Palin's use of the term "blood libel." The country's attention is rightfully focused on the memorial service for the victims of Saturday's shooting. Our prayers continue to be with those who are still fighting to recover and the families of the victims. The last thing the country needs now is for the rhetoric in the wake of this tragedy to return to where it was before. We hope that Governor 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.From the National Jewish Democratic Council:
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.Most are noting that Palin's claim is especially offensive considering that Rep. Giffords is Jewish.
| "We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply cross-hairs like you'd see on maps. - Palin's lying spokesman Link
North Carolina state Rep. Larry Brown says his state should eliminate all funding to treat adults with AIDS because it is caused by people living "perverted lifestyles." #### "Today has been set aside to honor the victims of the Tucson massacre. And Sarah Palin has apparently decided she's one of them." Josh Marshall ###
### CNN's Howard Kurtz issued the following correction: When I conducted the telephone interview for my Nov. 27 article on California Rep. Darrell Issa, my unambiguous understanding was that I was speaking with Rep. Issa. I subsequently learned that I was speaking to his chief spokesman, Kurt Bardella. None of the views ascribed to Issa are inaccurate, but the attribution throughout the story should have been to his spokesman, not to the congressman. We have since corrected the article. The earlier version also mentioned Darrell Issa's "tendency to refer to himself in the third person." In fact, that usage was appropriate because the interview was with his spokesman.I can't imagine why political reporting is so perpetually dumbstupid. ### Let the healing begin |
Through it all though, well meaning people on both sides of the ideological and partisan divide are not talking about the one thing that should be talked about — a saving faith in Jesus Christ.
I wonder how that squares with referring to Justice Souter as a goat-fucking child molester.
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Matt Taibbi provided his reflections on the Gifford massacre and the state of our over-polarized society looking for entertainment in all the wrong places.
It's certainly possible that we've all become too used to unrestrained rhetoric as a form of entertainment, and people like me live right in the middle of the guilt parabola there. Most all of us are grownups and can handle extreme argument, but clearly some people are not, and obviously I'm not just talking about Jared Loughner.
To see that, all you have to do is attend almost any family gathering, where once-loving relationships have been completely lost because of the overheated right-left culture war. If real family relationships are being lost to this kind of political debate, if someone on TV can reach into your living room and break up your family without knowing anything about you or even knowing that you exist, that tells us that this mechanized mass-media rhetoric has been almost unimaginably successful at dehumanizing whole classes of people.
So how do we work to re-humanize those other guys so that we can start to work on our shared problems together?
(I personally don't want to even talk with any of them, much less live in the same country.)
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The Rude Pundit:
There she sits, our idiot queen, crowned by her Hollywood coif, needing two American flags in the frame of the video to tell us how really, most sincerely Americanly American she is. In a jacket and a lower-cut than usual blouse (which, truly, made the Rude Pundit think, "She needs to use more sunscreen on her upper chest"), Sarah Palin speaks to the tragedy that occurred in Arizona this past Saturday, in "our country," she says. Then, in a moment that can only be described as "Uh, is she having an orgasm?" Palin sighs, "Mmmm...our vibrant country."
To watch Palin's seven and a half minutes of self-aggrandizement and strained victimhood is to understand in a microcosmic moment how cynically Palin is manipulating her followers. Simply put, the faux absence of self-awareness isn't charmingly silly anymore. It's just dangerous and sad. Quoting Ronald Reagan, she says, "Each individual is accountable for his actions." Then she continues, "They begin and end with the criminals who commit them." If that was the case, the world would be a simpler place, no? The entire fields of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and, well, criminal justice could be banished from the courtroom. Crime doesn't happen in a vacuum. If it did, if society had no responsibility to prevent it, then someone should have told the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, back in 2001 not to worry too much about building a nice hockey rink to keep the kids out of trouble.
But it gets worse. Later in the meandering video, in chiding members of Congress for overreacting to the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, she says, "Recall how the events of 9-11 challenged our values and we had to fight the tendency to trade our freedoms for perceived security." Umm, we didn't fight for our freedoms. That's why we have people held for ten years now without charge or trial in Guantanamo Bay (something Palin supports) and why we may have to have our nuts or vags fondled at the airport.
What Palin is actually saying comes through not in her hyperbolic use of "blood libel" (the Rude Pundit actually prefers his matzoh free of Christian child blood). Instead, here she is in defiant mode: "We will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms." No, no, let's not do anything in the wake of this shooting, like consider gun control measures and greater spending on mental health programs. That would take away our liberty. How can one celebrate America's greatness unless one is allowed to shoot the fuck out of animals while saying liberals are socialists bent on murdering your grandpa with a panel? It's unpossible.
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Blue Girl: Is civility with Conservatives even possible?
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Keep trashing Sheriff Dupnik, right-wingers The people on their feet when he popped up on the Jumbotron? Yeah, they are the people who vote for him, and have in every election he has stood for since being appointed in 1980. You are not going to drive him out of office in Pima County; the job is his as long as he wants it. But you might get your radio shows dropped from the second-largest market in the desert southwest. And since we think that would be a good thing for the American body politic, we say keep talkin.'
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Ted Nugent op-ed: Don't try to understand evil with "psychology" — just be ready to eff it in the aye! [Washington Times]
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Wonkette: Sarah Palin Delivers Annual State of Hateful Charlatan Provocation Address
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