Words Can Do Harm?

Something came to my attention the other day, something which brought a quote to mind. The quote was from "Becket" and is basically "oral tradition" and I think was spoken in the movie as "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?" The actual statement by King Henry II of England may be,  "What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?"

In any event, some loyal knights heard this and decide to act. They assassinated Thomas Becket, Bishop of Canterbury, in 1170 A.D.

A number of years ago, others recalled this quote, applied it to Bill O'Reilly's of Foxnews denunciations of abortion doctor George Tiller. You may recall that Dr. Tiller was murdered in 2009 by an anti-abortion activist named Scott Roeder. A number of liberal oriented websites castigated O'Reilly and invoked the metaphor of King Henry's quote.

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/bill-oreilly-responds-to-george-tiller-murder_b28329

http://themoderatevoice.com/33871/will-no-one-rid-me-of-this-turbulent-priest/

But what brought this quote to my mind? It was an incident occurring at a private fund-raising event in which President Barack Obama complained about the power of one Rush Limbaugh.  It turns out that there have been many such complaints made about Limbaugh by the president:

Google search for "Obama on Limbaugh"

Let me give you the most recent example and the one which triggered the quote in my mind:

"I genuinely believe there are Republicans out there who would like to work with us but they’re fearful of their base and they’re concerned about what Rush Limbaugh might say about them. And as a consequence we get the kind of gridlock that makes people cynical about government."

Toss in the Benghazi issues, the IRS targeting conservative groups seeking tax exempt status, and the Justice Department's looking at the phone records of AP statffers and journalists and one begins to wonder, as we did in the 70's, about an "Imperial Presidency."