Asking questions about Sarah Palin, ‘blood libel’

January 14, 2011 By

Americans received a nice little history lesson this week, thanks to Sarah Palin’s video reaction to the shooting in Arizona. We were quickly informed by just about every national news outlet that the “blood libel” is generally used to historically mean the accusations that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals.

Now, I’m the first to say that the media could use more historical context in their work. A more careful study of history would help us understand the actual significance of events and how they play out over time. Perhaps we would then spend less time on the Justin Bieber tweet of the day and consider, for instance, what’s going on in Tunisia, Australia, Haiti and Lebanon this week. (The Onion‘s masterful headline captures this comparison with the headline “Standoff In Ivory Coast Threatens To Boil Over Into Full-Scale News Blurb”)

Back to Sarah Palin and “blood libel,” it’s hard to know how to start a thoughtful discussion. Why don’t we start with the beginning, when reporters thrust Palin and a map into the coverage of the shooting in Arizona. I do not consider myself a defender of Palin, but I wondered whether editors and reporters stopped to consider whether she was, in fact, relevant. And don’t give me headlines like “Twitter abuzz over Palin’s map.” Mainstream media outlets are supposed rise above and attempt to decide what actually matters in the grand scheme of things.

Editors and reporters could have asked similar questions over whether it was relevant to cover Westboro’s earlier announcement to protest 9-year-old Christina Green’s funeral. Now, don’t get me wrong. You could make a case for covering these angles, especially when it led to legislation in Arizona. But few outlets seemed to consider asking questions like “Is this really news? How predictable is this? Does Westboro have any influence without media coverage?” Are we asking these kinds of questions before we hit publish? I’m not suggesting Palin or Westboro don’t deserve any ink, but the level of coverage seemed disproportionate to other issues going on in the world.

Sadly, with diminishing newsrooms and a rush for page views, reporters are increasingly unable to cover all the beats, so why do we need outlets covering the same angles? Part of the problem might include the number of blogs media outlets are creating. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been blogging nearly daily for several years and they definitely have their place. But I worry that reporters are spending their time posting the most minute details instead of allowing for long-term, big-picture, thoughtful coverage.

One of the bigger questions we have to start with is whether the media inserted Palin into the cycle unnecessarily. On Wednesday, though, you might argue that Palin inserted herself into the cycle when she posted a video reaction to the shooting. Most outlets zoned in on her “blood libel” comment, which led to article after article over reactions and outrage. Some of the coverage offered some good historical background, such as Laurie Goodstein’s piece for the New York Times. You could argue that Palin’s “blood libel” comment is worth noting, but how much coverage does it actually need before reporters squeeze every last angle out of it?

All of this brings me to one of the most confusing pieces I’ve seen come out of the Palin coverage. Matthew Cooper, a managing editor of the National Journal, suggests, “‘Blood Libel’ comment was likely used to fire up pro-Israel evangelicals.” Usually editors ask their writers to do some reporting, but it appears this one did very little.

After all, it’s not the first time Palin has aligned herself subtly with Jews. She has noted that after her election as governor in 2006, her childhood pastor suggested that she take the Bible’s Queen Esther as a role model. Esther was a beauty queen who became a fierce protector of the Jewish people. Palin is comfortable in the role of Esther, and many of her evangelical supporters see her in that guise, describing her as Esther-like. The multi-faith website Beliefnet called this phenomenon “Esther-mania.”

By adopting the blood libel language, Palin was most likely trying to pull another Esther–aligning herself with Jews, not denouncing them. It appears to have been a badly miscalculated effort, but it’s unlikely that it was her intention to offend.

“It was a dog whistle,” said one Jewish Republican who worked in the George H.W. Bush administration and declined to be named to avoid becoming enmeshed in the intraparty debate over Palin. The reference was to a device that’s silent to some ears but calls to others. “The media didn’t get it, but Christian activists did,” this source added.

Cooper’s one example to support his theory may not live up to what he’s imagined. For instance, Sarah Posner shoots back that Christians who identify with Esther usually aren’t identifying with Jews or Jewish history. Further, why does Cooper use one anonymous source to back up his theory? One of the first writers to use “blood libel” after the shooting was Glenn Reynolds in the Wall Street Journal. It would be interesting if a pro-gay marriage, pro-choice blogger was signaling evangelicals, wouldn’t it?

Unfortunately, Politico ‘s Jennifer Epstein only furthers this narrative with the headline “Some say ‘blood libel’ signaled base.” Apparently, all you need to do to get yourself in a Politico story is “float an idea” on a blog. Since when did reporters stop calling scholars or first-hand sources? Did anyone think to maybe ask an evangelical whether this might have served as a signal?

Reporters tend to whine about how Palin won’t do interviews with the mainstream media. On the other hand, they seem to wet their pants for every jot or tittle on Twitter. You might argue that she has a popular base, but how is she different from someone like Mike Huckabee, Glenn Beck, or someone else who has a media platform? Because she generates clicks? You would think that she was currently an elected official, a candidate for president, or something. Religion reporters especially should rise above the political filter the media generates.

Art: This xtranormal video came out last year teasing Politico’s coverage, but it serves as a nice critique of general media coverage.

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Filed Under: Evangelicals, Journalism, Judaism, Politics, Religion
  • http://myinspirationalsayings.blogspot.com Inspirational Sayings

    It seems so hard to stay one step ahead of the media. We must be careful of what we say and who our audience is – but sometimes, it matters not what we mean – only how it is interpreted.

  • Amy

    First of all, please excuse me if this isn’t very *cohesive* writing. I’ve never pretended to be super intelligent (although I do play a mean violin) …

    With all due respect, Ms. Bailey, I believe Sarah’s video was VERY relevant, given the toxic atmosphere today and those of us trying desperately to help tone it down. I am not a Sarah Palin fan, in fact I never have been. I wrote in to our local op-ed after she was selected and ranted away as to how an intelligent, one-time serious politician such as Senator McCain, could have come to the point of believing that if he had a woman on his ticket, then all the former Hillary supporters would be thrilled. The arrogance and condescension was dumbfounding, to me.

    Sarah’s acceptance speech was full of phrases such as *real Americans,* *pallin around with terrorists,* and others that really and truly offended me. She established her role right away, the role of an attacker. And as a peace-loving, do-unto-others type person, I became and remain heartsick.

    I agree the media has lost a lot of respect over the years, and rightfully so. But I do also believe that it is IMPERATIVE, psychically, spiritually, and in just about every other way, that we keep tabs on the health of our culture, and asking these kinds of questions are absolutely necessary.

  • Sarah Pulliam Bailey

    Amy, I’m sorry. This is not the place to talk about how you feel about Sarah Palin. We’re discussing journalism. We see no indication that the gunman was a follower of Palin. How did she become relevant to that particular coverage?

  • http://www.boke.com artistofideas

    The “blood libel” tempest is what happens when you let journalists read Wikipedia without telling them it is not a dictionary. (I won’t repeat what I commented elsewhere.)

  • Deacon John M. Bresnahan

    I’m still waiting for comparable negative coverage and reminders of the 8 years of violent nastiness thrown at President Bush. It seems that there is a lot of media amnesia on how rottenly they behaved toward him and other conservative voices over the last few decades. If it wasn’t Bush, it was Palin they skewered viciously. If it wasn’t either of them, it was Clarence Thomas who was gored.
    Only once have I seen mentioned the movies cheered lustily by liberals and some Democrats, endorsing Bush’s assasination.
    And if our culture is saturated with violence and brutality–where is there some criticism of Hollywood??? Oh yes! I know. The Hollywood beautiful people are tied in with the media conglomerates and the Democrat Party. Thus their virtual cheerleading for violence (to make a buck)is apparently off base as far as being part of the debate. Just go get Palin and hang her. “Blood libel” does strike me as very appropriate in the way the hyenas in the media went after her, we now know, for absolutely nothing that went on in Arizona. But when will the apologies come. And how long should she have waited to defend herself: “inserting herself.” She respectfully waited for 5 days while Democrats and liberals howled and bayed. And as everyone knows after too many days go by (usually about 5), they go on to other things leaving the original impression written in stone on people’s minds

  • Ira Rifkin

    I have no idea what Palin was up to with her, to my mind, very poor choice of words, calculated or not. But for better or worse, the term blood libel has passed into the vernacular in the same way as has (capital H) Holocaust. They’ve both become dramatizations intended to convey shock, horror and severity.

    But as this is supposed to be a Website about contemporary journalism what is relevant here, I believe, is not SP’s language and political gamesmanship but SPB’s (what a difference one letter can make) insight into the miserable state of the aforementioned journalism.

    Reporting seems a dying art, having been replaced by me-first, aren’t I clever, gossipy, don’t-I-know-everything, don’t-you-dare-gore-my-ox-even-as-I-gore-your’s “punditry.” (Yes, that’s a scare quote!)

    The legacy media was far from perfect. But the negative influence of the new media has reached levels that would astound Hearst.

    Excellant post SPB!

  • Amy

    I’m sorry Sarah, but your article seemed to me to be in apology for Sarah Palin, and that offends me not because I dislike her, but because you are doing exactly the same type of writing which you are purportedly questioning.

    Mental illness is complicated. It runs in my family. I can tell you definitively that a mentally ill gunman would not necessarily have to *follow* a politician very long before his interpretation of the narrative becomes very confused and very broad. Once again, I speak from experience. Journalism sucks now, no question, but Sarah Palin inserted herself into the narrative and set the tone. PERIOD.

    So perhaps your article would be more informative if you actually reported on mental illness.

    Thank you for your time.

  • Sarah Pulliam Bailey

    Amy, it sounds like you don’t read GetReligion very often or perhaps you misread my post. In fact, I even said outright I am not intended to defend Palin one bit. I’m asking how she became part of the coverage to begin with. Then I suggested she probably inserted herself into the cycle with her video. Mollie has done some writing on the mental illness aspect, but I chose one slice to critique. What we’re trying to do here is critique the media’s coverage of religion.

  • Deacon John M. Bresnahan

    At what point should Ms. Palin have defended herself? Anyone that followed the media for the days after the shooting saw that Palin was being treated as the “fall guy” or scapegoat for what happened in Arizona. And, likewise, everyone knows the media’s attention span in its news cycles does not go much beyond 5 days. And after the media moves on, the original impressions–no matter how false or erroneous, become engraved in stone in people’s minds. Palin waited to respond to the unfair attacks on her as long as was possible and respectful–unlike those who went after her immediately.

  • Denny

    I have been following the Sarah Palin “blood libel” story as well as the stories regarding the shooting and the shooter. To me the reporters are no longer acting as reporters but as mind readers. Immediately after the shooting, they came to the conclusion that one factor behind the shooter is the toxic political environment. They then concluded that there were many hidden messages (“dog whistle” messages) from Palin and the Republicans to stir the base to violence. Now in the article you sited above the reporter finding more hidden messages to the base. I did not realized that journalism school teaches mind reading!

  • Harris

    The use of the term “blood libel” becomes all the more interesting with the use of “pogrom” in the editorial in the Washington Times. Clearly, there is some mix in the meme that transfers terms of Jewish oppression over to the conservative sense of oppression by the media. This rhetorical equivalence of conservative and Jew suggests the intellectual provenance, at least rhetorically of the same piece as the accusation that those who condemned “neocons” were engaged in anti-Semitic behavior (e.g. as in this link Jonah Goldberg from 2005).

  • other Chris

    A story such as this is newsworthy in that is shows us what gets our dear leaders’ attention. Like the establishment reaction to the Tuscon shooting in general, it demonstrates the vast cultural divide between the ruled and the rulers in our society.

  • Dave

    I don’t see the GetReligion hook in the Palin story. The meaning of the term “blood libel,” which has religious overtones, was covered by some journalists, but that doesn’t win them praise. Had they ignored it, would that have been a “religious ghost?” What the point of criticism that won’t let them do anything right?

  • John M

    So I’m not here to apologize for the media, but one of the first stories I read on the shootings in Tucson, on the day of the event itself, contained a quote from someone who had been present–a Giffords staffer IIRC–who made the Palin/map connection in his quote. This was still while the story was very much unfolding (during the period when some sources were reporting her death and others weren’t, again IIRC). Now, I think it’s incumbent upon the media and their paid talking heads to exercise a bit more judgment before grabbing a politically useful meme and running with it, but the Palin/map connection was not manufactured from whole cloth by the media per se. Due to the rapidly changing nature of the stories at the time, I’m unable to track down any stories containing the quote itself.

    -John

  • Sarah Pulliam Bailey

    John, if you find a link, please send it. Some of the initial coverage made it seem like the alleged gunman was directly motivated by the map. Before her video statement, I could never figure out the relevance beyond a quick mention.

  • Justin

    The first time I saw any comment about Palin in the Arizona tragedy was in reference to a Markos Moulitsa tweet sent moments after the shooting. I’ve yet to see any indication that the Giffords staffers were making statements so quickly.

    http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/01/08/sarah-palin-blamed-by-bloggers-for-shooting-of-gabrielle-gifford/

    The press didn’t really link the hype directly to DKos (at least that I remember, I had a mix of NPR, Al-Jazeera, and CNN’s website), but that awful “some bloggers” phrase was used in reports on major news sites like NBC.

    That’s primarily where Palin was initially brought up from everything I can tell. If the press wanted to go the extra mile, it would have been fun to see them mention that DKos was also instrumental in starting the rumors about Trig Palin.

    As for “Blood Libel,” the phrase has been used so much in a political, non-religious context in the USA that hearing it purported to be an anti-Semitic slur is farcical.

  • Dan Crawford

    Sartah Palin chose to make the video, and she chose the words she used in the video. She might have reacted differently to the criticism of the cross-hairs ad, but she didn’t. She knew what she was doing. The media of course took the bait, and acted as the media do in circumstances where their ideaology tends to cloud what better judgment they may have.

  • Suzanne

    Giffords herself pointed to Palin’s map as something that worried her — on video, no less.

    It was covered in the media at the time, and appropriately so. A “target” of Palin’s ad called her out on it and linked it to rising concerns about overheated rhetoric and potential violence.

    I guarantee you that if a woman was shot and had previously made a video statement saying that, say, her ex-husband had made comments that made her uncomfortable, that would be part of the news coverage — whether he actually ended up being responsible or not.

  • http://Faith&Reason Cathy Grossman

    We’re stuck. Well, at least I’d have to say I am stuck. My charge for my beat and for Faith & Reason is to cover the intersection of religion/spirituality/ethics and our modern culture. So it does put me in the endless loop of paying attention to Palin/Beck/O’Donnell.
    The pols/hosts uses the language of belief to their own ends and it’s part of my job to help readers make sense of what they say and point out the larger context of their words.
    While I’m delighted that Laurie Goodstein did a good job for the New York Times (when does she not??), surely you don’t mean to say that that should suffice for the nation and USA TODAY is excused from doing a story, guilty of overcovering Palin? Our larger — and largely different — readership deserve to underestand the history of the “Blood libel” term.
    The late-in-the-week coverage of the Washington Times editorial re-defining “pogrom” in defense of Palin, Limbaugh and other conservatives also required coverage. Once again, it’s a beat+blogger’s job to give readers the information they need to make their own judgments.
    So, you may lament that this is part of our job but it appears that we can’t just pretend it’s not.

    On a different note… Westboro negotiated its way out of picketing funerals by getting guaranteed air time on some broadcasting media. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/12/national/main7239253.shtml?tag=stack
    Now THERE is a serious ethics debate!

  • Velma

    I don’t think that it is any more fair to blame the media for the link between the cross hairs and the shooting than it is to blame Sarah Palin directly for the shooting. Remember that no less a conservative and formerly Palin supporter than Elizabeth Hasselback herself expressed outrage at the cross hairs image when Palin first put it out; not to mention, as has already been mentioned on this site, the prescient concern expressed on video by Giffords herself. The connection was already out there for what turned out to be an eerie foreshadowing. This is in no way to suggest a direct cause and effect for what happened, but perhaps a serious message from a realm more spiritual than the media alone.

  • Passing By

    Are crosshairs worse than bullseyes? Would media obsession with the former be ameliorated by publicizing the second?

    I had the experience of dealing with a threatening, apparently mentally ill man in our lobby yesterday and can assure you all that Sarah Palin (nor the Democratic Leadership Committee) never came to my mind. It was an entirely apolitical event.

  • http://davidgriffey.blogspot.com/ Dave G.

    I can’t help but wonder, for all our talk about the toxic atmosphere of our modern debate, if it’s worse because of this strange ‘anything goes’ on one side, with ‘darn well better not say anything that offends [____________]‘ on the other side. I don’t know how, but it seems that if we just took off the gloves on one hand, or said from now on you can’t say anything about anyone on the other, things might not be so hyper-intense.

    Of course, on top of it all, is that narrative that guides our ways of seeing things. The coverage of Sarah Palin didn’t begin to get connected after a time; by Monday or Tuesday dots being connected that made some reporters think, “Aha, that’s what may have done it.’ No, it was straight out of the box. I saw the first breaking news clips, and within minutes some of the reporters and anchors were drawing lines to the Right in general, and Beck and Palin in particular. Or saying things like ‘even Republicans have offered their support for the victims’. Even?

    So I saw this Blood Libel thing, and somehow it all fit. I don’t know how, but it did! That some Jewish leaders would jump all over this reference in the midst of everything going on when it looked to a causal observer that everyone was trying to say ‘how do we reduce this toxic debate [read: for those we don't agree with while we can keep saying what we want]‘, might account for some of the mischief nowadays more than anyone has bothered to mention. At least IMHO.

  • John Pack Lambert

    I noticed when I went to read the WSJ article they had another either about a rabbi defending Mrs. Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” or it may have been written by said rabbi in defense. The computer I am on is extremely slow at anything on the WSJ so I did not read the article, but the blood libel issue is more complexed than some admit.

    “Blood libel” is used to refer to specific accusations historically lobbed at the Jews, but it is not inherently always in that term. Since Mrs. Palin is not the first to speak of attacks here as a “blood libel” the attempts to call it “code words” are odd.

    A bigger question people have not asked is “did Mrs. Palin know of the historic uses of the term as a motivation for Mideval attacks on Jews”? I am surprised that the “call Mrs. Palin an idiot every three seconds” media has not taken more pot-shots over that issue.

    I know of the blood libel mainly because I took a class on the history of the Jews in college, and another on the history of the Holocaust. If this was not the case, I think I would have thought “blood libel” meant that people were falsely connection someone with a killing. And my mother’s mother was raised Jewish.

    The Esther issue is even odder. As a Mormon I have actually heard Mormon women speak about whether a Mormon woman marrying outside the Church could be a modern Esther. At least in the Mormon mind Esther is not a Jewish beauty pageant winner who helped the political standing of her people, she is a daughter of the covenant who married outside the covenant and because of the influence and power she had due to the standing of her non-covenant husband she did much good.

    I always find it intriguing that in Fiddler on the Roof they sing “May you be like Ruth, and like Esther”, yes Esther who marries outside of the Religion, and then they have nothing but total anger and denunciation of their daughter when she marries a Russian. This is probably a sign that Fiddler is neither as schmaltzy nor as fake nor as Romanticized as some of its detractors claim it is. On the other hand, since the song expresses a classic Jewish blessing (and may even be a classic Jewish Sabbath song) I am not sure if even the writers of Fiddler grasped that particular amount of irony.

    There is one other matter that those who are so quick to attack Christians for using “Jewish” imagery ignore. In the book Jew verses Jew the author argues that the fall of cultural Jewishness in the US is largely because to a large extent Jewish culture has been absorbed by all Americans. When all Americans eat bagels and many of them include lox with it, eating bagels and lox no longer makes someone Jewish.

  • Sarah Pulliam Bailey

    Cathy, thanks for adding a reporter’s perspective. I know that some of this is theory and it’s hard when you’re the one figuring out what is actually newsworthy. Let’s take Christine O’Donnell, for instance. There were bits and pieces there that I think were interesting for reporters to cover, but I was confused how much political coverage she received when the race didn’t seem to be that close. Again, there were a few items here and there that were interesting as there have been with Beck, but sometimes it feels as though (often political) reporters all break the same news.

    However, I wasn’t trying to suggest that if the NYT covers something that USA Today shouldn’t. Like I said, I think you could argue Palin put herself into the coverage and that we all could use a good understanding of “blood libel” history. There were lots of good articles-I just wanted to point to at least one. In addition to religion news, I read a lot of political blogs, so perhaps I was just surprised that everyone turned into the pack mentality that her comment was the most important issue of the day (until the memorial service, I think).

    I realize I’m still talking theoretically and generally lumping outlets together, but my larger post hoped to poke at some questions about why we are covering what and how much do the different actions matter in the long run. On the Washington Times angle, that one’s tough because the newspaper’s circulation has dropped so dramatically. I think it’s worth noting, as you suggest, by some blogs for discussion.

    I do like your suggestion of giving readers information so they can decide for themselves. On the other hand, I think media outlets do set the agenda of what’s newsworthy and what might have longterm impact. We seem to have several levels of coverage: twitter/microblogging, blogging/updates/breaking news, news stories, features/long form, etc. that can signal to the reader the level of importance the outlet might see in the item.

    On Westboro, I was going to write on that as well, but my understanding is that these are radio talk shows, not necessarily news shows so I didn’t want to get too far off track. The issue is definitely worth talking about because it raises all sorts of questions about whether you should give an outlet to someone just so they won’t do something.

    Thanks again for weighing in on the conversation.

  • northcoast

    “Best of the Web” for 1/14 recounted recent past use of “blood libel” in reference to political attacks. Two were third party references to attacks on Pres. Bush and on Sen. Kerry. I can’t see how Mrs. Palin would have any need to apologize since no one seemed to be offended by those comparable earlier usages of the term.

  • Hector

    The Esther issue is even odder. As a Mormon I have actually Re: heard Mormon women speak about whether a Mormon woman marrying outside the Church could be a modern Esther. At least in the Mormon mind Esther is not a Jewish beauty pageant winner who helped the political standing of her people, she is a daughter of the covenant who married outside the covenant and because of the influence and power she had due to the standing of her non-covenant husband she did much good.

    To my mind, Esther is also a prefiguration of the Mother of God, and her intercessory role with the King of Persia prefigures Mary’s intercessory role with God. (I think the Marian resonances of the story are clearest if you read the extended version of Esther, particularly chapter 15, rather then the truncated Hebrew version…..you can find the extended version in ecumenical bibles like the RSV).

    There isn’t much specifically Marian about Sarah Palin, unfortunately…..:)

  • Julia

    Why was there not much media curiosity about why the KS Baptists were planning to picket a 9 yr old Catholic girl’s funeral? Heretofore, they were interested in gays and the military that accepted gays. What would that have to do with the 9 yr old girl?