Sanitizing Extremism: Palin and Beck on Violence and War

Blood Libel or No, The Political Climate Is Still Poisonous
Sarah Palin, once again, demonstrated her ability to rile both the left and right by uttering a few words from the last frontier. Now the ideological tribes will retreat to their clubhouses--Fox News, MSNBC, the political blogs--to stir themselves to outrage debating whether "blood Libel," a term historically reserved for a particularly vicious type of antisemitism, is an appropriate metaphor for the knee-jerk responses of a few liberal pundits after the Arizona shootings. Liberals attack the vi...

See, I Told You So Comes Back Around to Bite Rush Limbaugh
Actually, there is evidence that at least Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck have tacitly admitted their responsibility for inciting violence. Almost immediately following the shootings, Palin removed from her website the map with the gun sight crosshairs targeting Giffords. And Beck removed the picture of him stalking around with a pistol in his hand. The fact that they removed these images right after a shooting in which they are clearly inciting violence by gunfire is just coincidence, I guess. Th...

Palin and the Blood Libel
Sarah Palin speaking about the Giffords shooting. “Journalists and pundits,” Sarah Palin says in her video this morning, “should not manufacture a blood Libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.” The “blood libel” has generally described the specific, centuries-old myth that Jews kill Gentile babies and use the blood to make Passover matzah; it has been an historic (if false) justification for...

Palins Persecution Complex Culminates with Blood Libel Accusation
This gaffe -- demonstrating both an ignorance of religious history and language -- tops a disastrous week: her crosshairs map has been Exhibit A in the discussion of the use of gun-related imagery in political Rhetoric. But her PR has been woefully inadequate in explaining the map away as "surveyors symbols." Her TLC show will not be renewed by TLC, her chances for a successful run at the presidency have been downgraded, and even Barbara Walters expressed "feeling a bit sorry for her." Palin, ho...

Sharron Angle Responds to the Arizona Tragedy, Says It's 'Irresponsible' To Assign Blame To Her, The Tea Party or Sarah Palin
"Finger-pointing towards political figures is an audience-rating game" Politico.com Former Nevada Republican Senate Candidate Sharron Angle is blasting those blaming her for inciting the Arizona shooting that injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six others, saying the accused shooter went off the deep end long before the Tea Party movement started. In her first comments - coming three days after the shooting - Angle said in harshly worded statement that her critics were “dangerous ...

Palin: Journalists Incite Hatred After Arizona Shooting
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Sarah Palin posted a nearly eight-minute video on her Facebook page early Wednesday, accusing Journalists and pundits of inciting hatred and violence in the wake of a deadly Arizona shooting that gravely wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. [Photo Gallery: Gabrielle Giffords Shooting in Arizona.] Last spring, Palin targeted Giffords' district as one of 20 that should be taken back. Palin has been criticized for marking each district with the cross hairs of a gun sigh...

Words have consequences (Leo W. Gerard)
Five years ago, a 47-year-old Missouri woman began a duplicitous on-line courtship through MySpace with a 13-year-old neighbor who once had been friends with the woman’s daughter. The adult, Lori Drew, flirted with the 13-year-old, Megan Meier, through the guise of a fictitious, 16-year-old character named Josh Evans. Suddenly, “Josh” broke up with Miss Meier, writing to her, “the world would be a better place without you.”  Just hours later, Miss Meier hung herself in h

Sarah 'blood libel' Palin makes day to honor the victims all about her
Should we have expected anything else? Four days after the attempted Assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords that left six dead and fourteen wounded, and on the day that Congress and the President will honor the Victims of this tragedy, Sarah Palin just happens to choose today to assure America that she is among the victims. In a carefully orchestrated video, complete with a large American Flag that apparently flutters next to her fireplace, Palin quickly gets her sympathy for the Victims and ...

Judicial Watch: Goverment was cause of Tucson Tragedy?
The following is commentary by Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch, and Freedom Watch, and himself a U.S. Senate Candidate in 2004.  His commentary comes on on the heels of Rhetoric by the left who blame everyone from guns, Republicans, to Sarah Palin. The left conveniently forgets the seminal act that led to the creation of this nation; the Declaration of Independence. In 1776, the Founding Fathers declared our independence and proclaimed that force may be appropriate -- as ...

A Kindler, Gentler Push for Repeal?
House Republicans have postponed their vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act until next week, because of the Arizona shooting. And even when that debate resumes, Jennifer Haberkorn and Carrie Budoff Brown report in Politico today, the House Republicans will likely adopt a more measured tone. They won’t change their position on the issue itself. They remain committed to total Repeal. But the Republican insiders that Haberkorn and Brown interviewed seem to think Republicans would talk i...

Arizona shooting: Sarah Palin breaks silence, blames media, offers no apology
 Wednesday morning Sarah Palin broke her silence concerning the role her violent Rhetoric may have played in creating a climate of political violence leading up to the tragic shooting in Arizona. An angry and defensive Palin offered no Apology for her violent campaign Rhetoric and imagery, instead Palin blamed the media for Manufacturing a "blood Libel." Palin's message came in the form of a slick, well rehearsed, over produced video that was ultimately c...

Worst Human Being in the World: Rush Limbaugh
By Michael J.W. Stickings He could be our Craziest Conservative of the Day, but I think he's actually much worse than that. (Our newest contributor, Nicholas Wilbur, will have more on Rush this afternoon.) On his Radio Show yesterday, Dear Leader Rush actually said -- I kid you not -- that Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner has the full support of the Democratic Party: What Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full sup...

Sarah Palin's missed opportunity
Sarah Palin: "America's Enduring Strength" from Sarah Palin on Vimeo. I'll stand with Jon Chait and, oddly enough, Sarah Palin on this one: Palin is right to feel aggrieved. As Chait says, many have blamed her for a killing rampage that she had nothing to do with. A lot of Palin's Rhetoric is over the top, and her gun metaphors ("RELOAD!") and her target sights looked unsettling in light of subsequent events. But the subsequent events were not her fault. Moreover, I just don't care if Palin tho...

Sarah Palin's Stirring Speech in Support of Sarah Palin
Look, people. If there's one thing that gets Sarah Palin's hackles up, it's people criticizing Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin simply will not stand for it! So, obviously, when Sarah Palin discovered recently that a lot of people were implicating Sarah Palin's violent-ish Rhetoric and use of cartography symbols as contributing to an atmosphere that led ultimately to the Assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's life, Sarah Palin decided that enough was enough and cam...

Why the surprise? Whats the urgency?
Since the shootings in that Safeway Parking Lot in Tucson, Arizona, on Saturday, January 8, 2011, the Left and its major supporter, the Mainstream Media, have been having a field day with hateful non-statements against the Right: Everybody and his brother in those two camps has been taking every available opportunity to say something more or less like “Although there’s no evidence or solid reasoning to support it, it’s obvious that, even if he wasn’t actually hired and co...

The Arizona Shooting and the Left
The Deployment of power isn't always necessarily illegitimate, of course, but when that power is used, as the left unfailingly uses it, to compel autonomous individuals to pursue ends that are not of their own choosing, then violence has been done. Can we not, with good cause, claim that the left's governance has promoted a culture of violence? The recent Mass Shooting at a Democratic event in Arizona is nothing less than a massacre. Any remotely decent human being can only be overwhelme...

President Obama has a chance to be Clintonian tonight if he doesnt waste it
I recently wrote about the shameless attempts by some on the left to politicize the tragedy in Arizona.   New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Pima County Sherriff Clarence Dupnik were among the voices rushing to blame Right Wing talk, Cable News and a “climate of hate” for the Arizona shooting that claimed six lives, including a 9 year old girl and Republican Federal Judge, and injured Democrat Representative Gabrielle Giffords.  That they were doing so within ho...

'Blood libel': Reaction to Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin's video message Wednesday morning, meant to combat accusations that she shared in the blame for the tragic shootings in Tucson last weekend, only sparked new outrage over her assertion that her critics were Manufacturing a "blood Libel" against her. (The phrase "blood Libel" refers to age-old anti-Semitic falsehoods claiming Jews use the blood of Christian Children for ritualistic purposes). J Street is saddened by Governor Palin's use of the term "blood libel." The country's attent...

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: The Angry American Male
No sooner had Gabrielle Gifford been rushed to the Hospital with a massive gunshot wound to the head when the blame game got into full swing. Egged on by the comments of Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik the theory quickly emerged that right-wing conservative Tea Party Rhetoric had all but pulled the trigger. Conservatives shot back that the accusation was a "blood Libel," bereft of evidence and designed to score political points. Moreover, they argued, the left had spewed far more venom dur...

The Right Word: Fox and inflammatory rhetoric | Sadhbh Walshe
Rightwing talkshow hosts were horrified by the Arizona massacre - and by the allegations that their fiery Rhetoric may have somehow influenced the shooter. O'Reilly is convinced that the attack was simply the work of an out-of-control "nut job" and was furious with others in the media for suggesting that anyone on the right was in any way responsible for fostering a hostile political environment (View clip here). "The killer Jared Loughner is a psychopath. Civilisation has always had them ...

Legislating under the influence of catastrophe
It didn't take long after the Tuscon shooting for politicians and pundits to start proposing legislative responses. I haven't done a systematic study of this, but I would guess that Legislation passed quickly in reaction to tragedies, horrors, and catastrophes tend to range from pointless to really bad. Jacob Sullum at Reason makes a similar argument today. Here's his lede: Jared Lee Loughner, the man accused of shooting 20 people outside a Tucson Grocery Store on Saturday, probably will never g...

Systematic Assassinations Not Part of Our Politics
The steam seems to be going out of the move to "deftly pin this"--the shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 13 others--"on the Tea Partiers," as one unidentified senior Democratic operative put it to Politico. It has become obvious that the murderer was crazy, the follower of no political movement, motivated only by the bizarre ideas ricocheting through his head. If any blame attaches to others, it is to authorities who had notice of his madness and did not do enough to confine him o...

Sarah Palin Speaks from Some Undisclosed Facebook Location
Sarah Palin: “America’s Enduring Strength” from Sarah Palin on Vimeo. Sarah Palin chose to forget today that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords brought up Palin’s “targeting” of her when lamenting the vitriolic political Rhetoric in this country before Jared Lee Loughner tried to assassinate her in Arizona. In a weirdly disembodied and out of touch statement from the abyss of her self-imposed political exile, Palin picks today, the day Pres. Obama will address the nation...

This conversation is a set-up
Harsanyi: My only contribution to the crumbling discourse, it seems, is believing in the tenets of classical Liberalism. That, in and of itself, is a Sin. This leaves the person with two choices: revise your viewpoint or shut up. Which, of course, is the point. The always-civil Jacob Weisberg of Slate was more forceful in this regard, claiming that, “At the core of the Far Right’s culpability is its ongoing attack on the legitimacy of U.S. government . . . .” Which, as you kn...

Palin and Clyburn add fuel to raging fire with blood libel and intellectual deficits
I’m just going to summarize what I said in the comments because I’m still on an iPad App and it’s not designed for mini novels. Regarding Sarah Palin’s video this morning, she was defiant. I found it decidedly unhelpful. I was waiting for her to acknowledge that Conservatives may have gone too far. I didn’t hear it. I didn’t hear her acknowledge that the atmosphere in Arizona and other states had made liberals afraid for their safety even before Giffords’ shooti