I saw the following sentences in today's Washington Post and another article found in a web site.
What does 'McKinley moment' mean? I don't find this word in any of English Japanese dictionaries at hand. What's the origin of this word? Is this a word often used?
-If any good can come of the horror in Tucson, it will be that this becomes a McKinley moment for Sarah Palin and her chief spokesman, Glenn Beck.
-And that was before the McKinley moment. While Republican congressional leaders joined President Obama in Monday morning's moment of silence, Beck mocked it as an Obama photo-op. His show was on commercial break during …
Best Answer
I just read the Dana Milbank Washington Post article you referenced and I quote at length (emphasis mine):
McKinley moment is used here to draw a potential similarity between the chain of events that eventually destroyed William Hearst's presidential ambition and the possible fallout of Palin's belligerent brand of politics. As Milbank writes, McKinley's murder was attributed by popular acclaim to Hearst's inciteful commentary. While this may have been untrue and unfair, majority thought that this served Hearst right. Milbank claims here that the Gabrielle Giffords attack will most likely be blamed on Palin's (and Beck's) violent rhetoric and would possibly put paid (BrE idiom) to whatever presidential aspiration she may have, which, in his [Milbank's] opinion, would be a good thing.
It is common in English to use "__moment" to draw a parallel between a significant event, period or phenomenon in history (personal, public, national, etc) and its modern-day counterpart. I give an original example: