{"id":1588,"date":"2011-01-13T20:10:15","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T20:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=1588"},"modified":"2011-01-13T20:31:16","modified_gmt":"2011-01-13T20:31:16","slug":"palin-take-your-foot-out-of-your-mouth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=1588","title":{"rendered":"Palin – Take Your Foot Out Of Your Mouth !"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sarah Palin<\/a> has recently made a speech on the recent shooting spree in Arizona<\/a> where a congressperson was shot (and probably targeted by the shooter) in relation to the media noise about the aggressive and combative attitudes in US politics at the moment. In it she claimed the media was launching a ‘blood libel<\/a>‘ against the right-wing in US politics in its criticism of the political debate.<\/p>\n

Whether or not she has a point to make, the use of the phrase ‘blood libel’ here is grossly\u00a0inaccurate\u00a0and an example of exactly what the media is talking about. Blood libel is the phrase used to describe the hysterical accusations of\u00a0anti-semites\u00a0accusing Jews of sacrificing Christian children and draining the blood for some\u00a0religious\u00a0purposes – if it hadn’t been used as\u00a0the\u00a0excuse for slaughtering Jews throughout history, it would be ridiculous. I am hardly an expert on the US media, but I find it extremely unlikely that anyone from the US media is likely to hunt down any right-wingers, kill them, and drink their blood.<\/p>\n

Sarah Palin’s remarks are merely a hysterical over-reaction to a perceived attack on the right-wing. To be fair I should point out that apparently others have used the phrase in US politics recently. Which just goes to show that US politics is little over-heated. Interestingly a conservative commentator has pointed out that the use of this phrase is an indication that Sarah Palin just isn’t of presidential material – presumably presidents are expected to behave and talk in a slightly more dignified fashion.<\/p>\n

Did the US media attack the right-wing ?<\/p>\n

The US media did comment after the shootings that there is a considerable level of aggression in US politics today, and<\/em> used an example showing certain US congressional areas\u00a0targeted\u00a0with rifle cross-hairs which was published by the right-wing. This could<\/em> be said to be unfairly criticising the right-wing except that the reason that example was used was that the congressperson who was shot (Gabrielle Giffords<\/a>) had previously complained about that very publication in which she was targeted.<\/p>\n

Personally I don’t believe the right-wing was specifically targeted in the various suggestions that US politics can be a little aggressive. There is a lot to be said for lowering the temperature in US politics – opposition, criticism, discussion and debate are all a part of politics and essential in any healthy democracy. But there’s no need to go too far, and throwing around\u00a0inappropriate\u00a0phrases like “blood libel” is certainly an example of that.<\/p>\n

I have no doubt that there are Democrats who go too far too.<\/p>\n

We have no way of knowing how much the current atmosphere in US politics had an effect on the shooter, and will probably never know. After all he is clearly a deranged individual and he probably doesn’t know himself. The naysayers who claim it had no effect have no way of knowing that. If it did have an effect, it does not make those making\u00a0inflammatory\u00a0comments responsible for these shootings – not even to the extent of inciting murder.<\/p>\n

But the current state of US politics could<\/em> have an effect on deranged individuals even if it did not in this case. As such it is worth considering whether toning it down is worthwhile. Say “she’s an idiot” rather than “she’s a traitor”, say “he should be fired” rather than “he should be put in\u00a0the\u00a0chair and the switch thrown”. It doesn’t ruin the debate and it might<\/em> just save someone’s life – isn’t that worth it ?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Palin has recently made a speech on the recent shooting spree in Arizona where a congressperson was shot (and probably targeted by the shooter) in relation to the media noise about the aggressive and combative attitudes in US politics at the moment. In it she claimed the media was launching a ‘blood libel‘ against […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[791,792,790,793,789,129],"class_list":["post-1588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","tag-arizona","tag-democrats","tag-gabrielle-gifford","tag-republicans","tag-sarah-palin","tag-us","category-12-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-pC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1588"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1593,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions\/1593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}