Palinhass on CFRB

Better down some anti-nausea meds if you want to keep you lunch down when you come to the point in this radio clip (around 3/4ths of the way through) when Tarek Fatah and Bernie Farber dine out on Sarah Palin's (supposedly inappropriate/offensive) usage of the term "blood libel." The two lefty language cops think it was extremely "careless" of Palin to refer to her situation post-Tucson shooting as a "blood libel" because the term must be reserved for the specious accusation that Jews have killed luscious young non-Jewish lads and used their blood to add piquancy to festive Jewish baked goods.

Oh, go eat a (non-sanguinary) hamentashen, you two.

The truth is that Palin did not come up with the idea on her own. She was referencing Glenn Reynolds, who had used the term re Palin in a piece the Wall Street Journal. And since the hysteria surrounding Palin and the way the media scapegoated her for the shooting is not unlike the hysteria and scapegoating of Jewry that gave (and continues to give) rise to blood libels, I don't really see what the problem is.

To paraphrase a Gershwin:

It ain't necessarily so.
It ain't necessarily so.
Don't need to be tribal
To call it "blood libel."
It ain't necessarily so.

Update: How Rabbi Shmuley Boteach sees it (in the WSJ; h/t Roz):

Despite the strong association of the term with collective Jewish guilt and concomitant slaughter, Sarah Palin has every right to use it. The expression may be used whenever an amorphous mass is collectively accused of being murderers or accessories to murder.

Update: Who pulled the trigger in Tucson? Writing in the voice of a smug lefty, a tongue-in-cheeky David Kahane writes that we, the amorphous mass of conservative killjoys, did:

So is it any wonder we [smug lefties] immediately assume that you personally are responsible for everything bad that occurs in the world, you and Sarah Palin? Your very existence can only be an encouragement to nutballs, crazies, weirdos, and jackasses everywhere either to pick up a gun and start shooting, or to think about picking up a gun and start shooting, which to us is exactly the same thing. Like the somnambulists in Christopher Nolan’s Inception, we’ve drilled down so far into our dreams that reality and fantasy are indistinguishable, and we figure that if credentialed Ivy Leaguers like ourselves can’t tell the difference, why should you Dogtooth State Teachers College johnnies be any different?

Forget all that stuff we were saying about knives and gunfights and enemies and hanging Joe Lieberman in effigy, killing Henry Hyde, etc.; that was just our typical, high-spirited use of metaphor. Putting aside all the smashed plate-glass windows, the “Days of Rage,” and the photoshopped pictures of %$#@BUSH#$@! as the love child of Dracula and Hitler; we’re just a bunch of pot-smoking, fun-loving pacifist draft-dodgers at heart. This violence thing — we don’t really mean it, and you know it.

Right, 'cuz you smug lefty types can manifest only wuv, not hate.