Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Sarah Palin Goes Martyr and Plays the Blood Libel Card













Tanya said...


While it seems ridiculous and reactionary I've been saying that I would not be surprised at all if she is elected president. She has a Bush-esque, non-threatening, folksy stupidity that seems to be what the majority looks for in a president. I've heard seemingly reasonable people talk about how "real" she is.

ish said...

Oh you've got that so right about Palin and what she means by using the words blood libel. I read somebody suggesting she doesn't know what she's saying but you're right, she knows full well. She's tacking herself to a cross.

There's something chillingly calculating about this latest video.

chaunceydevega said...

@Tanya--I am getting there slowly. Are we elitists? Or do her followers, or are they, the "real" Americans?

@Ish--Thanks Ish. That woman knows exactly what she is doing. The more the middle of the road corporate media and others oppose her the more she draws strength. Don't get me wrong, she is an idiot, but she is no fool.

Werner Herzog's Bear said...

I think a lot of your comments are right on, but I think that Palin and her ilk really looked bad yesterday. President Obama's speech showed that he has more seriousness and gravitas in his thumbnail than the whole lot of his opponents put together. I think the events in Arizona will turn off the squishy middle of the political spectrum towards the Right, which smells of extremism these days. They made their bed, riding resentment to a Congressional majority, now they have to sleep in it.

Thrasher said...

Palin is the most powerful woman in America this reality is what I will be concerned about as I walk the earth ....

Tanya said...

I don't think that it's elitist to want your leaders to be smarter and/or better educated than you. Having spent one very expensive year at Georgetown, which technically isn't even ivy league, I can say that the educational reputations at those schools are completely deserved.

I've talked to people who, in so many words, find ivory tower educations intimidating and would rather have a leader who, "I could see myself having a beer with." Well, not me. I'd rather have a leader who I can see, "Reading a book."

Thrasher said...

Credentials have a value unk if they have more value than other vehicles of knowledge...

I encourage a totality of knowledge from education to failure to experience to common sense to existence..

What is objective of your accumulation of knowledge, education, credentials etc is always the query for me..

Tanya said...

Hopefully that didn't come off as an implication that you can only get a good education from an ivy league type school. I currently attend a university that barely qualifies as an educational institution.

I'm referring to people who discriminate against politicians who are educated at prestigious schools and swing the pendulum so far to the - right - that their leaders are barely literate. *cough refudiate cough*

Of course that's not an absolute since a certain popular former president went to Yale.

Thrasher said...


I am an age now where I want to explore new vessels of knowledge and truth..

Yeah I can beat down folks withot credentials and ven over inflated ones but for me at end of the day whatever you got if it add values to my orbit andthe world I am all in..I have spent many years in sandlots and learned plenty:-)

Oh Crap said...


Well, let's put it in starker terms. Blood libels most notoriously ended in pogroms. Palin is trying to say she is the victim of a pogrom.

Over the weekend, "Sarah Palin" the phenomenon was most definitely a scapegoat for many on the left. I argued forcefully against this reaction, not in any defense of Sarah Palin but because "Sarah Palin" and even her ilk are not the cause for the shooting.

That's an unpopular thing to say right now but I could give a shit about what's popular and trendy. Look at it this way: even if Loughner is found to be fit to stand trial, and even if along with that he's found to be a Palin voter with accounts at Conservatives4Palin and TeamSarah, good luck throwing her in jail for incitement. That's not the way incitement works.

Here's the way it works. Palin is no more "responsible for incitement" than she is a victim of a blood libel or a resulting pogrom. Both conditions are true. Time will tell about Laughner's motives. Palin is an easy target. Question for us is, what do we do with the next Palin, next Beck, next Limbaugh, etc. They are leaving legacies.

Oh Crap said...

As for dogwhistles, "blood libel" isn't really a dogwhistle among "Christian Evangelicals and Dominionists" (Chauncey's phraseology.) Most of them probably never even heard of the term before yesterday.

I think the dogwhistle had a different target audience, among the Jewish community, but it's unclear what part(s) of it. It certainly didn't win her any friends among liberal Jews but liberals of any stripe will never be won over and will usually be offended by Palin.

Another place to check is places like Israpundit and, who, as it might be surmised, are solidly in her corner. Most neoconservatives are, regardless of religion/ethnicity.

She'll also dogwhistle to antisemites with baloney about the evils of "Hollywood", a familiar antisemitic trope. Then she'll call the press "racist" because of Helen Thomas. Imo, Palin is the type of person who tries to appeal to all (or as many as possible) but in the end will appeal to none.