Sarah Palin channeling Queen Esther was one thing, but throwing the charge of "blood libel" at critics of her overheated rhetoric as regards the Tucson shooting seems to push her into right-wing talk radio territory:

The former Alaska governor, in a seven-minute video, mourned the tragic shootings that took the lives of six people and wounded 14 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). But she said the rampage was the act of a "single evil man" who gunned down peaceful citizens. She said she moved from puzzlement to "concern" as reaction to the incident in some quarters blamed conservative rhetoric for provoking the violence caused by "this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal."Violent acts, such as the shootings in Arizona, "stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them," Palin said. In remarks reported by Politico and The Hill newspaper, Palin said the media "should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.""Blood libel" is an extraordinarily loaded phrase because it recalls the false accusation by Christians against Jews that was used for centuries as an excuse for anti-Semitic persecution. The libel generally refers to the charge that Jews required human blood, and in particular the blood of Christian children, to bake matzoh bread.

I may be especially tuned in to Jewish sensibilities, having covered these topics for a long time. But this reaction of hers seems so un-presidential that it strikes me as a shark-jumping moment. Still, she has arguably had many of those. Then again, perhaps she is satisfied being queen of the populist right.I think this is also interesting -- not knowing the thinking behind her use of the phrase, if there was any thinking -- how this may illustrate the way conservative Christians in particular love all things Jewish, but don't necessarily understand them in their Jewish context. Or maybe don't care. There is a fascinating trend toward Christian seders, for example, and Christians using the tallit, or Jewish prayer shawls. But such "philo-Semitism" can make Jews uncomfortable, if not as uneasy as anti-Semitism.