Holocaust denial
by digby
Republicans got an apology of sorts from Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson Wednesday – it just wasn’t the one they wanted.
Instead of saying he was sorry about accusing Republicans of wanting people to “die quickly,” he gave an apology “to the dead.”
“I would like to apologize,” he said. “I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America.”
His sarcasm, delivered on the House floor, drew a swift rebuke from the National Republican Congressional Committee, which hopes to see Grayson defeated in an Orlando-based swing district next year.
“This is an unstable man who has come unhinged,” NRCC spokesman Andy Sere said. “The depths to which Alan Grayson will sink to defend his indefensible comments know no bounds.”
Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price of Georgia drafted, but did not offer, a resolution that would have expressed the House’s disapproval of Grayson’s remarks.
Rep. Alan Grayson has sent a letter of apology to the Anti-Defamation League after describing the health care situation as a “holocaust in America” on the House floor Wednesday.
Grayson, who is Jewish, first called Thursday to apologize to the ADL – a sort of national arbiter of anti-Semitism – and followed up with a letter Friday, which is the beginning of the Jewish festival of Sukkot.
Grayson spokesman Todd Jurkowski confirmed the contents of the letter, which were first reported by FOX News.
“In no way did I mean to minimize the Holocaust,” wrote Grayson. “I regret the choice of words, and I will not repeat it.”
But Grayson is making no apology to Republicans, who said they were offended when he said on the House floor Tuesday that the GOP’s health care plan amounts to “die quickly.” It was during a mocking apology to Republicans for that remark – when he used the term holocaust — that Grayson raised the ire of some of his fellow Jews.
CNN contributor Erick Erickson wrote this at the time:
The holocaust was real with a real meaning. Roping it into the health care debate cheapens what it was all about.
And what is truly ironic is Grayson champions a system that actually would compel people into terminating their elderly relatives’ lives as the elderly suffer at the back of a rationed health care line withering and dying.
(I know ….)
Now keep in mind that Grayson wasn’t directly comparing the American health care system to the Jewish Holocaust. He used the word holocaust in its broad definition:”destruction or slaughter on a mass scale.” But everyone from Maddow to Erickson agreed that any use of the word was an oblique reference to the Jewish Holocaust and, therefore, any use of the word is an insult to their suffering. Grayson, a Jew himself, apologized and agreed never to use the word again.
So what do you suppose is going to happen with this?
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann on Saturday described the loss of “economic liberty” that young Americans face today as a “flash point of history” in which the younger generation will ask what their elders did to stop it.
In a speech to New Hampshire Republicans, Bachmann recounted learning about a horrific time in history as a child — the Holocaust — and wondering if her mother did anything to stop it. She said she was shocked to hear that many Americans weren’t aware that millions of Jews had died until after World War II ended.
Bachmann said the next generation will ask similar questions about what their elders did to prevent them from facing a huge tax burden.
“I tell you this story because I think in our day and time, there is no analogy to that horrific action,” she said, referring to the Holocaust. “But only to say, we are seeing eclipsed in front of our eyes a similar death and a similar taking away. It is this disenfranchisement that I think we have to answer to.”
Granted, the fact that she makes Palin sound like Winston Churchill by comparison may confuse people enough that they don’t understand what she said. But once everyone takes an aspirin to get rid of their migraines, they should be able to see that Bachman has just compared taxation to the Jewish Holocaust. Directly.
I suspect it’s ok if you are a Republican. It usually is.
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