Blood Libel and Palin

Whoever gave that demagogue the advice to use or to retain that term in a prepared address to her followers? That is not just a way of speaking; that is not just a rhetorical trope.  Was she libeled? Was she even defamed?

From the mouth or ghost-writer of Glenn Beck, all right.  An adversive right-wing nutter will mouth such things.  But from a political leader who inspires an entire political movement in a western representative democracy?

There are fools and then there are fools who just don't get it.  The term leaves her one step from the Westboro Baptists - so at least she spoke with respect the the mass held for victims and mourners, even if that respect is not to be found in the teachings of her own evangelical church in Alaska.  But neither was it to be found in Obama's chosen church in Chicago.  The murdered federal judge was a Catholic who came there from mass, the congresswoman is a Jew.  The demagogue has never disavowed the teachings on Catholics and Jews of her chosen church and pastor in her Alaskan home town.  Or did she hear this term used by her father, her husband Todd, an advisor or some fellow extremist?

Would she but return to sports journalism where she could try to learn relevant facts and rules.

Is Palin aware of the "blood libel" which induced a pogrom in post-WW II Poland shortly after the end of the war even after the holocaust?  Is she aware that the perpetrators were Catholics - naive believers in the "one true faith" in which she was raised by her parents and which she has disavowed?

Could she really believe that a paranoid schizophrenic, aged 22, with no previous violence or convictions, is an "evil man" ?  Is mental illness the work of the devil as taught in her chosen Biblical-literalist faith?  Does she really believe that pogroms were not a social and cultural and religious phenomenon?

Does she believe that even as a sports reporter, she was not reporting on a football game or basketball game that was a social phenomenon with a social and economic history and which plays an agonistic function in the workings of America as a nation?  That places her libertarian views far beyond those of Glenn Beck in the extremist dimension.

note: her facebook stats today:

 @SarahPalinUSA

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Here's CBS editor-in-chief of CBSNews.com, Daniel Farber on Palin's "presidential" moment.