Borrowing From Dan Aykroyd on Classic SNL: Andrea, You Ignorant Slut!

So NBC's Andrea Mitchell thinks Sarah Palin is ignorant for using the term "blood libel" to characterize the charges that she caused Jared Loughner to commit murder. Mitchell, it seems, is of the belief the term is only ever used to describe the historical claim that the Jews had once engaged in the ritual killing of children so that their blood could be consumed. Oh, how incredibly ignorant Ms. Mitchell, and anyone else who has parroted her belief, is:

Andrew Cohen of CBS News, May 7, 2008: “So-called “judicial activism” occurs, in other words, when it’s your side that lost the case and it is nothing short of a blood libel against judges to accuse them of operating by fiat.”

(...)

AP, July 28, 2008: “Just before Obama spoke, Newsday editor Les Payne had called “blood libel” the argument that African-American journalists could not objectively cover Obama’s candidacy.”

(...)

Frank Rich, New York Times columnist, October 15, 2006: “The moment Mr. Foley’s e-mails became known, we saw that brand of fearmongering and bigotry at full tilt: Bush administration allies exploited the former Congressman’s predatory history to spread the grotesque canard that homosexuality is a direct path to pedophilia. It’s the kind of blood libel that in another era was spread about Jews.”

On the chance that you may argue that Mitchell might say the above noted uses of "blood libel" are also steeped in ignorance, bear in mind that Alan Dershowitz (no ideological conservative is he) has come to the defense of Palin by confirming that the definitional scope of "blood libel" has become much broader than its historical context.

The WaPo's Big Fail

It's bad enough that Al Sharpton would actually have the chutzpah to write a column suggesting that he is a supporter of "being passionate toward what we believe in without also being poisonous." This from the guy who lost a defamation lawsuit for accusing a New York Assistant D.A. of raping a black female teen (Tawana Brawley) and incited a race riot in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn ("If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.").

No, what's worse is that a major "mainstream" paper like The Washington Post would give Sharpton a highly visible forum for his laughably disingenuous pontification. Borrowing from a blogger named Just Karl, I suppose we should next expect The WaPo to run a column on healing and reconciliation by Fred Phelps.

h/t