{"id":336,"date":"2011-01-12T17:48:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-12T17:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2011\/01\/sarah-palin-blood-libel-statement-refudiate-or-celebrate.html"},"modified":"2011-01-12T17:48:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-12T17:48:00","slug":"sarah-palin-blood-libel-statement-refudiate-or-celebrate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/01\/sarah-palin-blood-libel-statement-refudiate-or-celebrate.html","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Palin &amp; &#8216;Blood Libel&#8217; Statement: Refudiate or Celebrate?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&nbsp;had to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2011\/01\/12\/jews-troubled-by-palins-u_n_808242.html\">bang out a&nbsp;story for Religion News Service this morning <\/a>about the fallout over Sarah Palin&#8217;s use of the loaded term &#8220;blood libel&#8221; in her <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sarahpalin?v=wall\">Facebook response to critics<\/a>&nbsp;who have made a connection between her kind of aggressive campaign rhetoric and the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz. on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p><iframe height=\"225\" src=\"http:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/18698532\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"400\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/18698532\">Sarah Palin: &#8220;America&#8217;s Enduring Strength&#8221;<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/user5713437\">Sarah Palin<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>On the one hand, I doubt the average evangelical Christian from present-day Alaska&nbsp;&#8212; definitely not the alternate-universe Alaska of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/05\/10\/AR2007051002593.html\">Michael Chabon&#8217;s excellent &#8220;Yiddish Policeman&#8217;s Union&#8221;<\/a> &#8212; knows what &#8220;blood libel&#8221; really means, in the context of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/news\/politics\/war_room\/2011\/01\/12\/blood_libel_history\/\">its historical use as justification for anti-Semitism and centuries of Jewish suffering<\/a>. Palin probably saw the term thrown around in the last few days, either <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748703667904576071913818696964.html\">in this Wall Street Journal op-ed piece <\/a>or elsewhere in the blogosphere, and figured it&#8217;s a catchy phrase for a false accusation related to bloodshed. After all, coining new words&nbsp;&#8212; or in this case, stretching the meaning of existing words &#8212; is something that a <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.abcnews.com\/thenote\/2010\/11\/congratulations-sarah-palin-refudiate-named-word-of-the-year.html\">living language can &#8220;celebrate,&#8221; <\/a>right?<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, the fact that this statement came out four days after the Arizona shooting &#8212; several lifetimes in Palin&#8217;s&nbsp;Twitterverse &#8212;&nbsp;and her general penchant for&nbsp;(up)loaded little soundbites (end-of-life counseling = &#8220;death panels,&#8221;&nbsp;also via Facebook) indicates there&#8217;s some deliberate use of language here.<\/p>\n<p>My favorite and appropriately pithy take on all this came via Twitter, courtesy of <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/jewlicious\">@jewlicious<\/a>: &#8220;Oh Sarah Palin: Calling bad press a blood libel is like calling a rough day at work the Holocaust.&#8221;&nbsp;As for the hundreds of Jewish and secular media responses&nbsp;to Palin&#8217;s statement within the last eight hours, here&#8217;s my pick for the most interesting so far: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politicsdaily.com\/2011\/01\/12\/sarah-palin-and-christian-conservatives-love-judaism-but-is-tha\/\">&#8216;Blood Libel and Sarah Palin: Christian Conservatives&#8217; Infatuation With Judaism <\/a>(Politics Daily).<\/p>\n<p>What do you think? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"WIDOWS: 2; TEXT-TRANSFORM: none; TEXT-INDENT: 0px; BORDER-COLLAPSE: separate; FONT: medium 'Times New Roman'; WHITE-SPACE: normal; ORPHANS: 2; LETTER-SPACING: normal; COLOR: rgb(0,0,0); WORD-SPACING: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px\" class=\"Apple-style-span\"><span style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left; FONT-FAMILY: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; FONT-SIZE: 12px\" class=\"Apple-style-span\">*<a style=\"PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif !important; COLOR: rgb(2,61,137); FONT-SIZE: 14px !important; TEXT-DECORATION: none; PADDING-TOP: 0px\" href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beliefnet\/beliefbeat\">Click here to<span style=\"PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif !important; FONT-SIZE: 14px !important; PADDING-TOP: 0px\" class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong style=\"PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif !important; FONT-SIZE: 14px !important; PADDING-TOP: 0px\">subscribe to Belief Beat<span style=\"PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif !important; FONT-SIZE: 14px !important; PADDING-TOP: 0px\" class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/strong><\/a>and<span style=\"PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif !important; FONT-SIZE: 14px !important; PADDING-TOP: 0px\" class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><a style=\"PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif !important; COLOR: rgb(2,61,137); FONT-SIZE: 14px !important; TEXT-DECORATION: none; PADDING-TOP: 0px\" href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/beliefbeat\">click here to<span style=\"PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif !important; FONT-SIZE: 14px !important; PADDING-TOP: 0px\" class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong style=\"PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif !important; FONT-SIZE: 14px !important; PADDING-TOP: 0px\">follow Belief Beat on Twitter<\/strong><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&nbsp;had to bang out a&nbsp;story for Religion News Service this morning about the fallout over Sarah Palin&#8217;s use of the loaded term &#8220;blood libel&#8221; in her Facebook response to critics&nbsp;who have made a connection between her kind of aggressive campaign rhetoric and the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz. on Saturday. Sarah&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Sarah Palin &amp; &#039;Blood Libel&#039; Statement: Refudiate or Celebrate? - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/01\/sarah-palin-blood-libel-statement-refudiate-or-celebrate.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sarah Palin &amp; &#039;Blood Libel&#039; Statement: Refudiate or Celebrate? - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&nbsp;had to bang out a&nbsp;story for Religion News Service this morning about the fallout over Sarah Palin&#8217;s use of the loaded term &#8220;blood libel&#8221; in her Facebook response to critics&nbsp;who have made a connection between her kind of aggressive campaign rhetoric and the attempted assassination of Rep. 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Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz. on Saturday. 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A graduate of Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she has previously written for The New York Times and other media outlets. She and her family live in Seattle.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/author\/nneroulias"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}