The media firestorm over the shooting of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords seems to have completely bypassed the person who actually shot her, Jared Lee Loughner, and settled entirely on former Republican Vice Presidential candidate and reality TV star Sarah Palin. Palin is not willing to take this blame, and she’s striking back at her critics via a 7-minute, 43-second speech uploaded to her Facebook page, YouTube, and other social networks in which Palin calls the accusations against her blood libel.
“Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn,” said Sarah Palin in a nearly 8-minute speech uploaded to Facebook and other social networking websites. “Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state — not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies, not with those who proudly voted in the last election.”
In response to those who said her use of crosshairs encouraged the violence against Giffords and that her heated rhetoric is to blame for the shooter, Palin responded, “There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those calm days when political figures literally settled their differences with duelling pistols?”
Tags: Sarah Palin, politics, political rhetoric, blood libel, Sarah Palin blood libel, Sarah Palin response to blood libel claims, Gabrielle Giffords, Tuscon, Arizona, Sarah Palin Facebook video, Sarah Palin Facebook speech, Jared Lee Loughner, political rhetoric, violence and politics
