The Gift Who Keeps on Giving

The best argument for re-gifting I've seen, but not to a friend you want to keep.

Eric Alterman

Sarah Palin is the gift who keeps on giving. Think about it. Palin holds no public office. Her political experience includes, exclusively, a term as a small-town mayor and an unfinished, albeit scandal-ridden term as governor of America’s least populous state. Her educational background includes attendance at six different schools merely to earn a bachelor's degree. Despite having run for vice president—in what John McCain’s top advisers later admitted was a desperation move—she has never participated in a full-fledged press conference with members of the national media. She communicates almost exclusively via 140-character pronouncements on Twitter, updates on her Facebook page, and brown-nosing interviews with the likes of Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck on Fox, from a studio the network built for her in her home. And yet she is by far the most written about, talked about, and most definitely muttered about woman in America.

For Palin to equate the notion that rhetoric like hers and that of her allies might have contributed to an atmosphere that could lead to a tragedy to one of “blood libel” would have to be considered insane if taken literally, though she appears to have borrowed it from right-wing bombthrowers Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Breitbart, who deploy it to defend the Tea Party against criticism. (Amazingly, the folks at The Washington Times manage to take this victimization metaphor even further, whining about, I kid you not, “the latest round of an ongoing pogrom against conservative thinkers.” I wonder how the victims of say, the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 would feel if they could hear the uses to which their suffering is being exploited.)

Fixer, cut a hole in the roof so Mrs. F won't hurt herself when she goes through it.

Obviously, many in the media share the blame, not only for ignorant and exploitative comments made above, but for paying so much attention to a figure whose views are decidedly marginal to those of the vast majority of Americans, and whose approval ratings bespeak little more than devoted cult. But any car crash is likely to attract attention and this last orgy of victimization by Palin and company serves not only to change the topic from the wisdom of their own violent rhetoric but gives their minions a chance to rally ‘round their leaders however illogical their complaints. I don’t expect this to happen, however. Palin is far more a symbol of the degradation of our political culture than its cause.

Meanwhile, I’ll give the last word to Susannah Heschel, a scholar of Jewish history at Dartmouth and daughter of the revered rabbi, the late Abraham Joshua Heschel, perhaps the most influential Jewish theologian of the past century:

Indeed, I would join other Jewish leaders who hope that, despite having the benefit of Jewish advisers, Palin was simply unaware of the history of “blood libels,” and used it out of ignorance. If she did use the term deliberately, with full knowledge of its connotations, I tremble at the political fabric she is manufacturing. Either way, Ms. Palin may have just garnered a spot in the Jewish history textbooks. Invoking “blood libel” in an utterly inappropriate context, she will be remembered for her manipulative use of one of the ugliest yet most persistent anti-Semitic canards Jews have faced.

'Canard' is defined as:

A false or misleading report or story, especially if deliberately so.

From the origin of the word:

French, literally, duck; in sense 1, from Middle French vendre des canards à moitié to cheat, literally, to half-sell ducks

Palin's a walking canard her own damn self, albeit a wholly-sold one. Hey, if it walks like a duck...