Not much that Sarah Palin does can shock me these days, so I wasn’t particularly surprised when she backtracked from her “crosshairs” poster and had her aides claim the crosshairs were just “surveyor marks.” Sarah Palin is a uniquely weak character—she can dish it, but she can’t take it, just like she can run for Vice President, but can’t hack four years as governor of a state with fewer people than my neighborhood.
My expectations were already low when she posted a gauzily-lit, platitude-filled response to the criticism on her Facebook page.
My jaw dropped at about the halfway mark, when Palin says: “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 that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”
Blood libel, for those of you who did not grow up with anti-Semitism, is the the anti-Jewish propaganda that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals, and therefore Christians must protect themselves from the Jewish threat. It was used for centuries as an excuse for pogroms and genocide and is still frequently invoked by the anti-Zionist Muslim media and Holocaust deniers like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hutton Gibson. In the US, blood libel is included in the dogma of neo-Nazi groups like the Aryan Nation and White Aryan Resistance. To anyone who espouses anti-Semitic ideology, it’s a familiar term—a dog-whistle, of sorts—especially as it’s used here to describe the media, which anti-Semites believe is Jewish-controlled. The fact that Gabrielle Giffords is Jewish makes it even more outrageous. (Read more discussion here on Politico)
That was a carefully crafted statement. Like most politicians, Sarah Palin probably did not write it herself. But “blood libel” is not a term that’s used in casual conversation–it has a very specific, very ugly meaning. The term was used for a reason. I want Sarah Palin to explain just what that reason was.
The thing that I don’t understand is that she seems to be painting herself her as the unfairly maligned victim–the blood-libeled “Jew”–here, while at the same time talkin’ up the Jesus and the Catholic Mass and the chewy chewy Christian beans of America’s super-awesomeness and omg argh my brain.
She is a wretched, reprehensible being.
She can’t explain it — she hasn’t got a clue. She isn’t an “elite” — she does not need to call upon “book-learning” to know what’s right.
She is symbolic of the failure of this nation to teach children properly, to couch them in reason and logic, instead of fame and fortune. She cannot form cogent thoughts and lines of reasoning; she is purely reactive and emotional, easy to offend, quick to strike back. She is a petulant child.
@PhDork: Let me translate that from veiled anti-Semitism into English for ya:
“Those Jews in the media will use any excuse to attack us good, honest, Jesus-loving Real Americans, even when we did nothing wrong. They’re sneaky and clever and reprehensible like that, and we have to make sure we keep an eye on them.”
someone tweeted something like: “If you have to scrub your website when bad shit happens that doesn’t say much for your ideas”.
Also, insert rage here.
“…the chewy chewy Christian beans of America’s super-awesomeness and omg argh my brain.”
PHDork: Best line I’ve heard this week.
Sarah Palin is just straight out nuts. She’s blind to the way her words, actions, and implications affect others. As a public “political” figure, she holds immense responsibility and accountability, which she tries to shrug off constantly.
hi there. i’d never heard the term ‘blood libel.’ thank you for explaining it. how deeply horrifying that whoever wrote that syrupy BS used the term. gah!
i wasn’t really joking the other day when i said that when Sarah Palin hears the word accessory she thinks ‘handbag’ and when i hear the word accessory i think Sarah Palin.
Thank you for the explanation, Becky. As I listened to the speech, I wondered at the strange, heavy emphasis early in the speech on the CATHOLIC memorial. (Listen, she says the word much more clearly and loudly than the others around it, with a little pause.) The later anti-semitic reference gives that early groundwork its is completely horrifying context. It’s worse than I could have imagined.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Amina Mithri. Amina Mithri said: RT @TPoHarpyness: Sarah Palin and “Blood Libel” http://bit.ly/fJsQKQ [...]
Andrew Sullivan is way too soft on her here. Imo he’s too Catholic to get how heinous this is.
But he noticed the word “manufacture”. “Manufacture” here is code for “conspiracy theory” which is one of Rush’s talking points. As in, the Democratic party has set this up.
It’s just too insane to think about without losing it.
Hard to paint yourself as the victim of a slander perpetrated against Jews when you’re so busy nailing yourself to your very own cross.
We will now start hearing the phrase “blood libel” every time someone does something to make Beck or Boner cry. I can’t wait.
The video was temporarily taken down, the reinstated. Indecision is not very Presidential.
@Newt: Yeah, I noticed that, which is why I switched our embedded version to a YouTube one.
IMHO, if you have to constantly erase/reinstate your opinions according to the response they get, you need to seriously reevaluate what you’re saying in the first place.
The horribleness of it all: You know she had no idea what the term Blood Libel means historically.
A lot of modern day Christians use terms like these and have no idea what the meaning for it is anymore. For her to use it towards the media in an instance where she put cross hairs on a woman who is Jewish is well…*wow*
I would like to get really harpy too: She needs to fire her speech writer. This person either has a white robe in his closet that is not a Snuggie…or this guy has not been paid for her last speeches and is pissed.
Oh, and just in case the Anti-Defamation League had one single molecule of credibility left after the Park 51 mosque debacle: “‘It was inappropriate at the outset to blame Sarah Palin and others for causing this tragedy or for being an accessory to murder,’ Abraham Foxman, the group’s national director, said in a statement. ‘Palin has every right to defend herself against these kinds of attacks.’
But Mr. Foxman added that “we wish that Palin had not invoked the phrase ‘blood-libel.’ ” He called it a phrase ‘fraught with pain in Jewish history.’”
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/palin-calls-criticism-blood-libel/
Do others here feel that she does know what she is saying?
@rodriguez In the sense that she knew it was a deep dig? Yes. As for the disgusting irony/idiocy of her comment, she has not a clue.
Question about the phrase blood libel:
Is blood libel the description we use about the anti-Semitic, crazy, Jews-will-eat-your-babies mentality (like, “The blood-libel paranoia that we find in historical accounts of expelling all Jews from [insert European country] is disturbing”), or is it the phrase used by said Europeans to justify their anti-Semitic behavior (like, “We need to kick you out of our country because of blood-libel”). Sorry for the grammatical wonkiness of those example sentences–I’m trying to figure out if it’s a phrase used today to describe a historical phenomenon or a phrase used throughout history in the historical phenomenon of anti-Semitic policies. Does it describe anti-Semitism or is it an anti-Semitic slur?
The comments are a dog-whistle by reminding her followers of their historic hatred of Jews. She’s also managed to get attention and sympathy on herself instead of on Giffords.
@Cimorene: As to your question about whether it’s an anti-Semitic slur or description of anti-Semitic policy, I think it can be both depending on the context.
On one hand, it could be seen as Palin’s creating this image of herself as an innocent victim of vicious slander, like the Jews. I’ve heard that interpretation, and it makes me want to puke. Reminds me a bit of how a Vatican official drew the same parallel last year by saying the child-abuse scandal led to Church being unfairly persecuted by the media the same way as Jews had been historically persecuted.
Personally, I think rodriguez is right that it’s a dog-whistle that reminds some of Palin’s followers of their historic hatred of Jews–in this case by going after the media, which they believe to be Jewish-controlled. Certainly every angry, disaffected, anti-government, white supremacist wacko over on Stormfront.org sees it that way, and Palin’s got some support from that camp.
At any rate, I completely second Shawn Laundry’s awesome comment about Palin’s speechwriter. She needs to ditch him/her pronto.
Heh, Cimorene I sort of have the same question and I’m not sure Becky or rodriguez has answered it. I don’t know how else to phrase it, though.
Forget about Palin for a minute. Is “blood libel” a term for the fictitious Christian baby killing, or is it a term to describe the accusations of Christian baby killing?
@SarahMC: It is actually a reference to the accusations themselves.
This is all so very sad; does this species never learn? I am VERY worried about the similarities to the scenario before WWII and its dismal atrocities: immense wealth held in the hands of a few; the so-called middle class (the economic engine) disappearing; huge social problems resulting, then scapegoating and persecution followed by a horrific war. This time it will be SO much worse.
Typical. 6 people die, several others are critically wounded … and Palin decides to play the role of the maligned victim.
Sarah suffers from a severe chronic case of Athletes’s Tongue, but this particular reference may offer some insight into her religious upbringing.
Wow. No hate or vitriol here.
Do any of you people EVER look in the mirror? No, of course not. it’s always THEM who are the problem. The blind spot that the left has to their own hatred is stunning.
Do any of you people EVER look in the mirror?
Yep. And since I have never encouraged the shooting of people whose politics I disagree with or used anti-Semitic propaganda to blame people for criticizing me…I’m totally okay with what I see there.
Mark: Is the phrase “you people” a polite formulation where you live?
A little historical background: the blood libel specifically accused Jews of kidnapping and murdering Christian children and using their blood in matzah during Passover. This led to annual pogroms in Eastern Europe, and hundreds of thousands of Jews died. When we celebrate Passover today, we enact a ritual that came into being in order to deflect stories about blood libel. We welcome the prophet Elijah, who represents the coming of the messianic age, by opening the door to the outside, symbolically showing that we have nothing to hide.
The painful irony about the blood libel is that under the rules of kashrut we are extremely careful not to consume any blood at all. Meats are salted to draw out all the blood. So the libel was a cruel insult as well as an excuse for Jew killing.
@Mark Sikes Please give specific examples of hate or vitriol in this post or comments otherwise go back under your bridge.
I find that video to be, on the whole, viscerally disgusting. The fact that she straight up made the argument that it’s evil for people to suggest there are things she shouldn’t say, but that people criticizing her is equivalent to a practice that led to whole villages being massacred and they should immediately stop…I agree with you, PhD, “aaaaarrrgghhh my brain”. But furthermore, it is her response, much more so than the actual shooting, that makes me feel unsafe as an American.
In some ways, as an Australian, I am jealous of the US constitutionally enshrined right to free speech, and I get that Palin is entitled to use that right.
But what I don’t understand is how the freedom of speech is treated – it’s like anybody (including those in the public spotlight) can say whatever they like, without thinking about the ramifications of publicly saying whatever comes to mind.
I’m all for the freedom of political speech, but I’m also for responsibility of political speech, especially in ensuring that it doesn’t incite hatred, violence, intimidation, and other nasty things against fellow human beings.
I find the explanation very credible that the use of the word was absolutely deliberate and meant to send barking white-sheeters into howls of derisive laughter for getting to see her do the one-two punch of baiting journalists with the thinly veiled anti-Semitic accusations that the media is controlled by Jews.
She is no moron. She knows what circus ringleaders Barnum and Bailey said, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’
She is a pugilist. I am glad she is showing her true colors.
This website is the clearest-eyed I have seen this evening so far.