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Showing posts from January, 2011

The Words of a Tragedy

Words matter. If they didn't, if there were no consequences to our utterances - good and bad - Jewish literature would not be chockablock with cautionary tales from Talmud to midrash to watch what we say. Those stories of the rabbi and the feather pillow and the broken mirror did not come out of a vacuum; they were written for a reason. Let's be honest: politicians love rhetoric and television/radio pundits need inflammatory language the way an active alcoholic needs booze. No political party has been innocent, yet the right wing has taken the cake lately. An American president accused of not being an American, "don't retreat, reload," the "2nd amendment remedies," Nazi, Hitler (briefly abused by the left against VP Cheney but taken to the nth degree by Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and others), death panels, a Sarah Palin map of the US with gun cross hair sights over names and places of politicians who were on a political hit list and a politician hosting an