The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel (WSJ - supporting Palin)

[Lucinda]

* This article is from the 10th - and I may be wrong - but I think this may be the source of Palin's choice to use the phrase in her statement on the 12th. I don't think the choice was anything other than finding support in the OP-ED, and then using it to craft Palin's response. Plus it would already resonate with the fundies and the WSJ readers. - But like I said, I may be wrong. :) I've been seeing a lot of searching for some meaning in her use of the phrase - wacko religious beliefs etc - and I really do think it was just a matter of seizing on the concept used in this OP-Ed and running with it against all the people saying she had blood on her hands over the shootings.


The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel
Those who purport to care about the tenor of political discourse don't help civil debate when they seize on any pretext to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.

By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS

Shortly after November's electoral defeat for the Democrats, pollster Mark Penn appeared on Chris Matthews's TV show and remarked that what President Obama needed to reconnect with the American people was another Oklahoma City bombing. To judge from the reaction to Saturday's tragic shootings in Arizona, many on the left (and in the press) agree, and for a while hoped that Jared Lee Loughner's killing spree might fill the bill.

With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and reporters seemed to agree that the massacre had to be the fault of the tea party movement in general, and of Sarah Palin in particular. Why? Because they had created, in New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's words, a "climate of hate."

The critics were a bit short on particulars as to what that meant. Mrs. Palin has used some martial metaphors—"lock and load"—and talked about "targeting" opponents. But as media writer Howard Kurtz noted in The Daily Beast, such metaphors are common in politics. Palin critic Markos Moulitsas, on his Daily Kos blog, had even included Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's district on a list of congressional districts "bullseyed" for primary challenges. When Democrats use language like this—or even harsher language like Mr. Obama's famous remark, in Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"—it's just evidence of high spirits, apparently. But if Republicans do it, it somehow creates a climate of hate.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703667904576071913818696964.html">More at link

[MrModerate]

1. I have two observations . . .

1) The WSJ editorial page exists solely to be dickish. I have never seen an original idea in their slate: everything is a snarked version of what better minds, usually in the center or the left, have said the day before. They're attention whores in pinstripes.

2) Sarah Palin has a soul about a molecule deep, and that exceeds her intellect by a large margin. She also has a lazy streak about as wide as the Mississippi. She's a political bowerbird, pecking at anything shiny and taking it back to her nest, generally without any notion of what it is. She apparently surrounds herself with equally shallow and inept advisors who spend their time lolling their tongues and drooling "Yeth, Tharah!"

She's scary, but not in a Doctor Strangelove sort of way. More like Inspector-Clousseau-with-a-nuke sort of way.

[Lucinda]

5. LOL

Clousseau with a nuke :)

[deacon]

2. Well yes, Murdocks publication. No surprise him protecting Palin's Fred Phelps moment. n/t

[Kolesar]

3. I see the morning republicans are here to unrec

kick

[Lucinda]

4. TY

:hi:

[fascisthunter]

6. Rupert Murdoch the Fascist Propagandist tearing apart America