Posted on 01/12/2011 5:42:46 AM PST by reaganaut1
Sarah Palin, who had been silent for days, on Wednesday issued a forceful denunciation of her critics in a video statement that accused pundits and journalists of “blood libel” in their rush to blame heated political rhetoric for the shootings in Arizona.
“Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own,” she said in a video posted to her Facebook page. “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.”
Ms. Palin’s use last year of a map with crosshairs hovering over a number of swing districts, including that of Gabrielle Giffords, had increasingly become the symbol of that overheated rhetoric. In and interview with The Caucus on Monday, potential 2012 rival Tim Pawlenty, the former Republican governor of Minnesota, said he would not have produced such a map.
But in the video, Ms. Palin rejected criticism of the map, casting it as a broader indictment of the basic political rights of free speech exercised by people of all political persuasions.
She said that acts like the shootings in Arizona “begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state.”
“Not with those who listen to talk radio,” she added. “Not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle. Not with law abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their first amendment rights at campaign rallies. Not with those who proudly voted in the last election.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com ...
LOL, and they will again continue to hit themselves over the head with it!
It’s like using the word slavery to describe some minor inconvenience of government”
Not at all. The people the left libels often end up in gulags or killing fields. The blood libel Palin referred to was an effort to discredit an entire group of people to which, incidentally, we both belong. If history gives them the chance they will, to borrow a phrase from Congressman Kanjorski, put us up against a wall and shoot us. There is no trace of hyperbole in Palin’s use of the term blood libel. If you think there is, you haven't been paying attention.
Nobody’s perfect. It’s nice to see you say that, and I think it is important for everybody to remember. Sometimes I find supporters of a candidate too quick to defend things that look so clearly to be mistakes, thinking that acknowledging a mistake is a bad thing.
I think this was a mistake, and I don’t fault Palin for it beyond the specific fault of making the mistake. If every politician was disqualfied for using the wrong words once, we wouldn’t have any politicians.
It’s better I think to attack the unfairness of over-punishment for a trivial mistake of language, than to try to defend the mistake of language.
I would hope she was a little more knowledgeable about the real meaning of “Blood libel” and not just copy the phrase from Glenn Reynolds. In retrospect, after reading this thread, I just assumed that most FReepers had the background to understand what “blood libel” really meant...it appears that few if any were actually familiar with it...magritte
Rush Limbaugh is talking about Sarah’s video now.
What are your thoughts about Haley Barbour, or Michelle Bauchman? I also like Mitch Daniels. I'm not sure Sarah Palin can win.
Good for her. and I hope she sues every single bastard who accused her of being a co conspirator to murder
Seems to me that wtc doesn’t get what Sarah is all about. She is her own person, can’t be manipulated by the media and it will be up to We the People to decide what role she will play in the political arena. So far she is capturing the essence of what most people are thinking relative to the shooting.
The usage also includes human sacrifice and that is what the media is trying to do to Palin, sacrifice her on the alter of politics, so their problems go away. jmo
If she can make that argument (and I think such an argument COULD be made, but also should have waited a “respectable time” after the shootings so as not to take focus from the shootings), I will applaud her.
I’m not sure that was where she was going — it’s a very risky strategy, to claim, in a time when most of us on our side are arguing that militaristic words are just normal politics and shouldn’t be used to claim responsibility for violence, that the opposition is using words to incite violence against us.
Not that it might not be true, just that it muddles the message. What IS our message? That the right uses combat terms but just politically and nothing more should be read into it, but the left’s words are meant to get people to kill us?
I just don’t say Palin going that route. It doesn’t quite seem in her nature — it would be more of something I’d expect from a Mark Levin than Sarah. She seems much more into bridging the divides and bringing us together, not so much into the “they are trying to literally kill us” argument.
Oh I see, your problem is you are afraid she will be our next President?
BTW, she isn't a candidate for anything.
Her only mistake here is not going even further to degrade these MEDIA people.
Why are you obsessed with political correctness ?
Pixels by the terabyte are almost infinitely cheaper, and as the OGW (NYT) is learning, are much more widely read or heard.
This is their charge, their job, their goal.
I agree with that. Sarah and other public commentators, and to a lesser degree most of us on the right, have been falsely accused of complicity in murder and violence.
It’s libelous, slanderous accusations. But “blood libel” is not just two words put together, it is a phrase with a very specific meaning. The point is valid, but the use of the term could obscure the valid message. Time will tell.
She has taken this issue to a new level, and it helps put us on the offensive against all the "blood libel" out there.
Pretty good for a girl! /s
The reason I lurked here for so many years is due to people like you. The reason I decided to start posting is also due to people like you.
Sarah Palin gave the speech The President of the United States of American SHOULD have given after this premeditated murder of 6 people.
When I see people on FR following what was initially written by the MSM and arguing their point, I shake my head.
IF we had a strong President, that President would have given that very same speech today, that President would have quietly called his party’s representatives and cheerleaders and told them to stop with their remarks of blame where it did not belong. However, we don’t have a strong President. We do, however, have Sarah Palin.
This man in Arizona planned and killed 6 people, he wounded many more. The media initially and collectively began the blame game. When a strong conservative speaks up about that, what happens? Her words are immediately attacked by the same media and then..........some here on FR.
God help our country.
oops...marxism, not marKism...phonics learner...sorry
The use of the term “blood libel” in non-Jewish contexts is out of bounds, eh?
Andrew Sullivan, October 10, 2008:
A couple of obvious thoughts. Paladino speaks of “perverts who target our children and seek to destroy their lives.” This is the gay equivalent of the medieval (and Islamist) blood-libel against Jews.
Ann Coulter’s column, October 30, 2008:
His expert pontificator on race was The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, who said the Pittsburgh hoax was “the blood libel against black men concerning the defilement of the flower of Caucasian womanhood. It’s been with us for hundreds of years and, apparently, is still with us.”
From a the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, September 30, 2009:
Almost immediately following the aftermath of the shooting, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation was the unlikely voice that called for the safeguard of Muslims in the armed forces.
Within hours of the news breaking, MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein criticized former Alaska Governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin for saying that she was “all for” profiling against Muslims.
“We’re not painting all Jews as thieves for Madoff’s economic crimes,” said Weinstein, comparing Palin’s comments to a “blood libel.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/256955/term-blood-libel-more-common-you-might-think
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