Libel To Say Anything

Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin doesn’t like be accused of having anything to do with the Arizona massacre—fair enough, so issue a statement saying so, but be a stateswoman and say  you still regret the crosshairs. Instead, she issues an eight-minute statement accusing her detractors of “blood libel” for suggesting her rhetoric was beyond the pale. Yeah, her rhetoric isn’t that bad, she just throws around phrases like “blood libel” to defend herself. (Does she even know what the phrase means? Does she want to be sure no Jews like her at all?)

See, when people put crosshairs on public servants’ districts, that’s just heated political rhetoric. When other people object to those crosshairs as being potential encouragement to lone-wolf nutjobs, that’s blood libel.

There are a bunch of blood-thirsty lunatics in the Republican Party, and then there are the conscientious conservatives who really wish they’d go back to simply voting instead of running their mouths and running the show.

Oh, and while both sides have lunatics, what does it say that “only” 11% of Democrats and Independents think violence against our government is sometimes justified while 28% of Republicans think it is? Perhaps more Republicans are given to paranoid fantasies of “what would I do if my government were taken over by military coup?” (in which case, of course violence is on the table) but the way the question was asked, it strikes me more as, “Is it okay to kill government officials when they’re in favor of laws that I find to be outrageous”?

Graphic Violence

Crazy!

If you thought Sarah Palin’s “lame map” (per Rush Limbaugh) with crosshairs over Arizona was in poor taste, what about the blog by Travis Corcoran, a Massachusetts-based comic-book retailer? His blog post on the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords is entitled “1 Down, 534 To Go,” and reads:

“It is absolutely, absolutely unacceptable to shoot ‘indiscriminately’. Target only politicians and their staff, and leave regular citizens alone. Please!”

He followed up his post—after receiving a storm of criticism and after his Heavy Ink company became the target (see how those shooting metaphors work out?) of a boycott—by further explaining he feels everyone in the government is an enemy of the Constitution. He believes every member of Congress is the same as Hitler, his example being that we’d all kill Hitler if we could go back in time to his childhood—this guy really is a comic-book nerd. He is also anti-choice.

I think it’s extremely hard to boycott businesses based on what their owners or higher-ups believe or support, but this case seems pretty cut-and-dried.

Matt LeBlanc Is Still Hot

 

Matt LeBlanc’s new Showtime series Episodes looks great! And so does Matt, still. In Details (February 2011), he addresses comments on his Clooney-esque graying:

“I started going gray in my early twenties. I remember on Friends, in the very beginning, putting the stuff on the sides. Then it became a full shampoo job. People are saying, ‘Oh, he’s going for the George Clooney thing.’ I’m not going for the George Clooney thing—I’m getting old. I’m going for the inevitable.”

Matt, honey—don’t compare yourself to George Clooney! You are even hotter.