{"id":151,"date":"2011-01-12T11:01:26","date_gmt":"2011-01-12T11:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/palin-v-giffords-blood-libel.html"},"modified":"2011-01-12T11:01:26","modified_gmt":"2011-01-12T11:01:26","slug":"palin-v-giffords-blood-libel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/palin-v-giffords-blood-libel.html","title":{"rendered":"Palin v. Giffords = Blood-libel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

With her usual flair for dramatic self-victimization, Sarah Palin has taken to her Facebook page to charge<\/a> her critics in the media with one of the most odious accusations in Western culture:<\/p>\n

\n

If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that
\nvision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But,
\nespecially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should
\nnot manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and
\nviolence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, well, let’s remember what blood libel actually means<\/a>. It’s falsely charging a Jew with murdering a Christian child in order to make matzoh for Passover. \n<\/p>\n

What Palin has been accused of is not ritual murder but helping to incite the attempted assassination of a Jewish member of Congress–based on her publication of a map that put Gabrielle Giffords in the crosshairs for (political) elimination. For one of the country’s most prominent Christians to call that a blood libel is, at the very least, bad taste.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With her usual flair for dramatic self-victimization, Sarah Palin has taken to her Facebook page to charge her critics in the media with one of the most odious accusations in Western culture: If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nPalin v. Giffords = Blood-libel? - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/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\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/palin-v-giffords-blood-libel.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Palin v. Giffords = Blood-libel? - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With her usual flair for dramatic self-victimization, Sarah Palin has taken to her Facebook page to charge her critics in the media with one of the most odious accusations in Western culture: If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/palin-v-giffords-blood-libel.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-01-12T11:01:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Palin v. Giffords = Blood-libel? - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/palin-v-giffords-blood-libel.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Palin v. Giffords = Blood-libel? - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"With her usual flair for dramatic self-victimization, Sarah Palin has taken to her Facebook page to charge her critics in the media with one of the most odious accusations in Western culture: If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/palin-v-giffords-blood-libel.html","og_site_name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2011-01-12T11:01:26+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/palin-v-giffords-blood-libel.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/palin-v-giffords-blood-libel.html","name":"Palin v. Giffords = Blood-libel? - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-01-12T11:01:26+00:00","dateModified":"2011-01-12T11:01:26+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/palin-v-giffords-blood-libel.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/palin-v-giffords-blood-libel.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/01\/palin-v-giffords-blood-libel.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Palin v. Giffords = Blood-libel?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}