'IS THERE NO OTHER VOCABULARY AVAILABLE?'.... I try not to be overly sensitive to suspect language, but this really hasn't been a great week for the right.
Obviously, Sarah Palin's use of the phrase "blood libel" generated quite of talk on Wednesday, given the phrase's loaded historical background. Today, we get another example, with the far-right Washington Times editorial board defending Palin in an editorial:
This is simply the latest round of an ongoing pogrom against conservative thinkers. The last two years have seen a proliferation of similar baseless charges of racism, sexism, bigotry, Islamophobia and inciting violence against those on the right who have presented ideas at odds with the establishment's liberal orthodoxy.
As those who've been engaged in recent years have no doubt noticed, many of the charges of "racism, sexism, bigotry, and Islamophobia" haven't been "baseless" at all.
But putting that aside, did the Washington Times really have to characterize criticism of the right as a "pogrom"? Cathy Lynn Grossman's take is worth reading. (via Adam Serwer)
Pogrom? Is there no other vocabulary available to discuss the venom in our discourse without raiding the language that specifically stands for the deaths of millions of Jews in historic rampages of anti-Semitism? Is this language not doubly inappropriate as Jewish congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords recovers from a gunshot to her head?
Blood libel, now pogrom. Ignorance is not a defense. Stop playing the victim.
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