Way Too Much Credit

I knew as soon as I read former half-term governor of Alaska Sarah Palin's video recorded message what "blood libel" meant. I read the transcript because I wouldn't dare watch the video. Nonetheless I knew what the term "blood libel" meant in the historical context at least.

"Blood libel" is a term wrongly used to suggest Jews murdered Christian children as a sacrifice or for some sort of medicinal purposes.  The term has been around for hundreds of years and used to incite fear in Christian populations about Jewish conspiracy theories, most recently for our collective memories in Nazi Germany.

It's very doubtful Sarah Palin knew anything about that.  She's never been accused of being smart a day in her life.  So it's more accurate that just like many on the right who endlessly watch Fox News, she was simply spreading around one of their new catch-phrases they routinely use to lament their own victimization, which TPM lays out the convincing paper trail here.

She really doesn't need to apologize to Jewish people for using such a derogatory term cause I'm certain she had no clue about the history of it.  She should, however, apologize for spreading the hate and fear she learned from watching Fox News but to do that would cost her millions of dollars.

I also found it interesting, if not ironically accurate, that just like bin Laden, Palin prefers to address her flock and the media via prerecorded video taped messages.  It keeps the press from asking questions and allows for their followers a personalized feel to the video.  I just hope for Palin's sake she wasn't reading the script from a teleprompter but instead had the entire 7-minute thing memorized.  One can only hope.