ALSO: *Memo to conservative morons: there's a perfectly good all-American term to express your perpetual feeling of victimhood. It's called "**waving the bloody shirt*<http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/accountability-and-victimization.html> *."
You don't have to use the phrase "blood libel." It's inappropriate to use the term cavalierly at any time, but especially inappropriate when the real victim was Jewish. * http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/ Wednesday, January 12, 2011 Palin And Victimhood by digby I haven't commented much on Palin and the crosshairs because I think it's a bit of a sideshow --- which she's now taking full advantage of to push her own victimization. The pistol-packing mama grizzly is a celebrity riding the zeitgeist, she's not creating it. The real problem, in my view, is that there is a subset of Americans who believe that government is illegitimate if their chosen leaders aren't elected. They simply don't believe in democracy. Voting is a ritual for them, something one does, like go to church. But it's expected that their preferred leaders will always win and their preferred agenda is the only one that will be enacted. (In one of the greatest ironies ever, they are undoubtedly the same people who stuck with George W. Bush to bitter end --- the most illegitimate president ever.) They get very, very agitated and angry whenever they are not "in charge." (Sadly for them, they never actually are.) I watched it happen in the 90s and we saw it rise up almost immediately after Obama was elected. They believe that they are "the people" and Americans who disagree with them are either unworthy and irrelevant --- or they don't actually exist (which I think is far more common these days with the right wing noise machine.) Palin is one of them. She listened to Glenn Beck's sob fest on Monday, in which he urged her<http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/with-e-mail-palin-and-beck-discuss-the-arizona-shootings/>to "get protection" for her family, and realized that she was now the leading victim of the victims: Sarah, as you know, peace is always the answer, said Mr. Beck, reading from an e-mail he sent her. I know you are feeling the same heat, if not much more on this. I want you to know you have my support. But please look into protection for your family. An attempt on you could bring the republic down. That's an important person. Presidents have been shot down while in office and it didn't bring the Republic down. Since many Real Americans already believe they are under seige from this "outside force" which has taken over the government against "the people's will" this will probably solidify her as their leader. She won't be president now but then, that was never going to happen. Now she is a martyr, without having to actually be martyred, which is ever so much better. And lucrative. It's a good career move. ALSO: *Memo to conservative morons: there's a perfectly good all-American term to express your perpetual feeling of victimhood. It's called "**waving the bloody shirt*<http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/accountability-and-victimization.html> *." You don't have to use the phrase "blood libel." It's inappropriate to use the term cavalierly at any time, but especially inappropriate when the real victim was Jewish. * Update: Palin's champions: <http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9ks36c549BI/TS3fdk4pc6I/AAAAAAAAB2U/SknZ7fTJ1Vs/s1600/Screen-shot-2011-01-12-at-8.13.12-AM.png> . *digby **1/12/2011 08:30:00 AM*<http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/palin-and-victimhood.html> Comments (34) Tuesday, January 11, 2011 *Palin Reloaded, And Reloaded, And Reloaded, And...* by tristero <http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fxJhAju65fo/TS1K4dUaLVI/AAAAAAAAAIo/baNpbEEwysA/s1600/crosshairsStrangerCover.jpeg> from The Stranger <http://www.thestranger.com/> via Salon<http://www.salon.com/> *tristero **1/11/2011 10:30:00 PM*<http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/palin-reloaded-and-reloaded-and.html> Comments (27) Setting The Record Straight by digby There's a right wing trope out there that says Daily Kos put a "bullseye" on Giffords, just as Palin did. For the record from Media Matters:<http://mediamatters.org/research/201101110003?newsref=www.eschatonblog.com> Original Daily Kos Post Did Not Contain A Picture Of Giffords Or A Bull's Eye. In a January 10 Daily Kos post, blogger Jed Lewison wrote that the Tea Party Express fundraising letter "actually goes so far as to suggest that a 2008 post written by Markos was somehow equivalent to Sarah Palin's use of the gunsight imagery and her exhortations to 'RELOAD" in the conservative battle against Democrats. Instead of linking to the actual post, the letter links to a photoshopped version, which ads an image of Rep. Giffords and a bullseye, neither of which were in the original post." Lewison links to the original Daily Kos post which indeed does not contain an image of Rep. Giffords with a bull's eye. [Daily Kos, 1/10/11<http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/25/541568/-2010-will-be-primary-season> ] Here's the photoshopped page done by Gateway Pundit, which has been picked up all over the media and the blogosphere: <http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9ks36c549BI/TSzpPJHpnnI/AAAAAAAAB2E/FyNAOX-KxOA/s1600/KosBullseye.jpg> And then there's the other lie about DKos scrubbing the site on Saturday, which Cokie's Law<http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/cokies-law-by-digby-chris-matthews.html>has now made an article of faith along the lines of the "Move-On Hitler" trope. I know that I don't have to tell regular readers here that this is nonsense. But just for the record --- there was a diary that had been written earlier about Giffords' vote against Pelosi for speaking in which a supporter had declared "she's dead to me" the way a matriarch would disinherit a misbehaving child. The diarist removed the diary out of respect for Gabrielle Giffords but due to the obscene charge of "scrubbing the site of death threats" was later re-posted. Keep this in mind when you hear the right repeat this nonsense over the next oh ... hundred years. And again, I would suggest that you read this post about rhetoric from Lawyers, Guns and Money in order to understand why the Markos "target" and the Palin "target" are different. An excerpt<http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/01/what-is-violent-rhetoric#more-18397> : Are bullseye that different from crosshairs? Of course not. However, the intended audience is: the imaginations of liberals and leftists who support a restrictive interpretation of the Second Amendment are not stoked by images of bullseyes. They generally have no pathetic investment in crossbows and so appeals of this sort are less likely to be effective than those like the one above. In terms of rhetoric, then, only the first of these two maps can be designated as violent because only it attempts to persuade its audience into action by stoking imaginations by referencing shooting things. Please read the whole thing<http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/01/what-is-violent-rhetoric#more-18397>because it's important. Passionate political speech is intrinsic to our democracy and it's essential that we not get so tied up in knots that we render this conversation incomprehensible -- or inadvertently start calling for (more)restrictions on telling the truth. . *digby **1/11/2011 05:30:00 PM*<http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/setting-record-straight.html> Comments (60) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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