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 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 called upon President Barack Obama to “immediately issue a statement as Commander-in-Chief making it clear that there would be a zero-tolerance policy against any member of the U.S. military inflicting harassments, retribution or reprisal against an Islamic member of the U.S. military.” . . .
He 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.”
During the recount in 2000:
Florida Democrat Peter Deutsch last night on Crossfire:
Let me just talk a little bit about the whole, I guess, spin from the Republicans about — which has been to me the absolute most — the worst statements I have ever heard probably in my life about anything. I mean, almost a blood libel by the Republicans towards Al Gore, saying that he was trying to stop men and women in uniform that are serving this country from voting. That is the most absurd thing and absolutely has no basis in fact at all.
In the grand scheme of things, the idea that Palin used a phrase associated with one particular, egregious, and historically recurring false accusation to rebut a modern false accusation seems like little reason for outrage. For perspective on what really is worth outrage, the services for 9-year-old victim Christina Taylor Green are tomorrow.
UPDATE: Some more examples, from my side of the aisle:
Jed Babbin, September 8, 2004:
When, in April 1971, John Kerry testified to a Senate committee that “. . . war crimes committed in Southeast Asia [were] not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command,” he said that the average American soldier who fought in Vietnam was a war criminal. Kerry’s statement was false, a blood libel that hangs in the air to this day.
Michael Barone, November 15, 2004:
And the argument against Michael Dukakis, which he never effectively countered because there is no effective counter, is that giving furlough to people who have life without parole is a position that Dukakis defended over 11 years as governor of Massachusetts or governor candidate, is a crazy law, and he supported it over 11 years. You don’t have to be a racist to want a murderer, whatever his race, to stay in jail and not be allowed outside on the weekend. To say that the American people were racist and they just want black people in, is blood libel on the American people.
John Hood, September 23, 2003: “A ‘Blood Libel’ Against the News & Observer.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Either Joel Roberts or Andrew Cohen of CBS News (both names are listed), February 9, 2005:
Ward Churchill still doesn’t get it. Even though he has tried to clarify and backtrack upon the worst of his intemperate remarks about the victims of the terror attacks on America, he persists in hanging a blood libel on thousands of victims and, by clear implication, you and me.
Andrew Cohen of CBS News, May 7, 2008:
So-called “judicial activism” occurs, in other words, when it’s your side that lost the case and it is nothing short of a blood libel against judges to accuse them of operating by fiat.
Alex Beam in the Boston Globe, January 14, 2005, discussing the accusation that an official had used the “n-word” in meetings overseas:
My two anonymous sources were making charges that amounted to ‘blood libel’ against former colleagues; that raised the bar for ethical publication.
John Derbyshire, April 28, 2008: “A Blood Libel on Our Civilization.”
AP, July 28, 2008:
Just before Obama spoke, Newsday editor Les Payne had called “blood libel” the argument that African-American journalists could not objectively cover Obama’s candidacy.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Frank Rich, New York Times columnist, October 15, 2006:
The moment Mr. Foley’s e-mails became known, we saw that brand of fearmongering and bigotry at full tilt: Bush administration allies exploited the former Congressman’s predatory history to spread the grotesque canard that homosexuality is a direct path to pedophilia. It’s the kind of blood libel that in another era was spread about Jews.
The question is does she have any idea the SIGNIFICANCE it has for Jews?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIsn't the bigger issue that Palin's use of the term makes no sense? It seems that she picked the term specifically because of its violent imagery, ignoring the fact that it didn't make sense in the context in which she used it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou miss the point of what has happened here. Nothing she said will be remembered. You show this yourself by writing this whole article about a two word phrase. Those two words are what people will talk about. Not what she said. It's very, very poor speech making.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI see the media successfully derailed the message because Palin used two words that others in the media have been using to describe what's been going on the last couple of days.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA couple of points:
*Jews are not the exclusive targets of "blood libel"--not now, nor throughout history, even in the strictly-understood meaning of the phrase, so no matter how much significance it holds for the Jewish people in general, they are not the only victims of it.
*The phrase has, pretty obviously, gained a much broader definition just going by Geraghty's list.
In fact, Glenn Reynolds used this exact phrasing and context in an OpEd on Sunday in the WSJ (oddly enough, nobod--even the looking to be offended at every turn left--freaked out then):
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It probably isn't much of a stretch to believe that Palin's writers got it from there.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePalin is more trouble than she is worth. The first week of the glorious Republican Congress and what is the Republican media complex doing? Why the same thing they've been doing since the day she became the nominee for VP, trying in vain to defend Sarah.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePalin is more trouble than she is worth. The first week of the glorious Republican Congress and what is the Republican media complex doing? Why the same thing they've been doing since the day she became the nominee for VP, trying in vain to defend Sarah.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBlackhawks, I'm not sure it would be a good idea to encourage the partisan press by throwing Palin under the bus, because it's not as if they're willing to be reasonable to Boehner or any other conservative politician.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow amazing. The term has been used throughout the media for other than the jewish connotation. Palin uses it in perfect context. An insane guy in Az shoots his congresswoman and others. Somehow the media and democrats blame Palin. It's "through the lookingglass" time in the U.S. The media and the left run do not grasp that their running amok, thrashing, threatening, screaming and rending their garments like some possessed lunatic puritan syphilitic calvinist makes them seem rather unreasonable?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMost of the comments here are a complete joke! Palin was linked to mass murder within hours of the crime and some of you want to focus on two words that she used to defend herself?
And some wonder why we get rolled by the left?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse> Carla Zee said: Nothing she said will be remembered.
Like, uh, "death panels," right?
> C.T. said: Isn't the bigger issue that Palin's
> use of the term makes no sense?
On the contrary, it is a most poignant turn term to use, being both sufficiently strong (as evidenced by the brouhaha brought on by its use) and technically correct (it also known as a "blood accusation," which primarily is what she is addressing).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust because the term has been used more widely, doesn't mean it should be. Just because it has been used more widely, doesn't mean that it isn't loaded with ugly history. it's not just that the blood libel was a false accusation - it's the things that were done to the Jewish population in its name. Google the Kielce pogrom for a fuller understanding of how the term isn't exactly archaic in Jewish history. To my mind - and I say this as a conservative, a Catholic, and a student of the Holocaust - there is no more willfully selfish term that Palin could have used.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe sooner Palin gets destroyed by the media the better. Whilst I have some sympathy for her, she is one of the few Republican Presidential candidates who are almost dead certs to lose to Obama. She needs to be un-nominatable because if Republicans lose in 2012, 2016 will be too late to undo much of the damage to America.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThough I'm not inclined to support a Palin candidacy I am happy to have her around and to have the left focus on her. She serves as a human shield, drawing fire that would normally be directed at the wider right to her in particular. (Oh I'm sorry, is that rhetoric too violent?)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe use of "blood libel" could be construed as an example of demonstrating absurdity by being absurd. The charge of "blood libel" is no more hyperbolic than the claims that conservative talk radio is somehow practicing "eliminationist" rhetoric.
The phrase "Blood Libel" has its roots in Medieval Jewish persecution, while eliminationist rhetoric was coined to describe the Jewish Holocaust. It's actually a clever twist of phrase, if you think about it that way. Though most people won't make the connection.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"It seems that she picked the term specifically because of its violent imagery, ignoring the fact that it didn't make sense in the context in which she used it."
It DOES make sense: a "blood libel" is when you falsely assign collective blame for murder to stoke hatred against a group.
It is a political tactic to portray the TEA Party and conservatives in general as violent, dangerous people--right down to the metaphors they use--as evidenced by the fact that every time a random act of violence breaks out, the port-siders IMMEDIATELY shrieks that the perp is a right-wing nutjob. Then after it comes out that the person was just a garden-variety crank (or a left-wing nut job), they insist that right-wing rhetoric pushed them to do it.
They don't say it because it's true but because it's useful. The NARRATIVE must be maintained, because the narrative puts them in power, truth be damned.
The left has been using this particular tactic since the JFK assassination, and especially since OKC. Keep lying until it sticks, I guess.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHarvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz releases statement defending Palin's use of the term:
“The term “blood libel” has taken on a broad metaphorical meaning in public discourse. Although its historical origins were in theologically based false accusations against the Jews and the Jewish People,its current usage is far broader. I myself have used it to describe false accusations against the State of Israel by the Goldstone Report. There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term.”
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell gosh, nice to see that Palin Derangement Syndrome is alive and well in the comments at NRO.
"Blood Libel" is entirely appropriate after what the Left has done with this story since murders occurred.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"The sooner Palin gets destroyed by the media the better."
Yes, and once she's destroyed, the media will just move on to another target like Romney, Huckabee, etc.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
No matter who the nominee ends up being in the end, conservatives need to defend their own against unwarrented attacks by the media whether it's Romney, Huckabee...or even Sarah Palin
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe can learn much from fierce monkey fights about being primates as they say we are. However we should not behave on an animal level but on a civil one where condemnation is examined and falsehoods are revealed because this is a time of judgement.
I have no issue with Palin's comments but with those who want to turn tragedy into benefit politically at a time when we mourn life lost at the hands of a mad man. It is as a micro event of the World trade center bombing on 9-11-2001 when we mourned life lost at the hands of a mad man.
I very much yearn in prayer for a nation undivided and united against evil doing universally.
We cannot forget our beginnings nationally nor supplant them toward a one issue agenda, however If everyone at those meetings were armed the mad dog would have been put down quickly and we could go on peaceably the business of the nation.
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