the press consensus about the palin clip gravitates toward emphasizing the epic stupidity of the blood libel phrase and her fumbling of an opportunity to move beyond talking exclusively to other neo-fascists.
Sarah Palin's effort to defuse controversy backfires with 'blood libel' comment
what's interesting in this piece beyond providing a little resume of quotes is the information about palin's reframing campaign in which she is trying to recast herself as a "tea party hawk" in order to appear less stupid and partisan and more "presidential"---what's funny about the "tea party hawk" idea is that if you strip away the noxious rhetoric of the tea party, it's really the same as any other reagan-y military keynesian. same old same old, but even less smart and certainly less viable as an approach to the empirical world.
matthew--->don't watch or care about olbermann. sorry to disappoint.
as for "partisanship"---if the paliny right was broadly understood as american neo-fascism---which it is and that in a strict sense----then i wouldn't be bothered with them because the stupidity of their politics combined with the weight of the term would assure their marginalization. what bothers me really is that they are able to be neo-fascist without getting called on it much less labeled what they are. i blame an activist conservative media apparatus that is operating on explicitly political grounds in the context of a downsized and domesticated mainstream press that seems afraid to take on the far right. perhaps in wobbly financial times they worry about offending some of the corporate big boys who run the show. but mostly, i think they've just been cowed by conservative media activism. to everyone's detriment.