Saturday, June 04, 2011

Anti-history: Paul Revere's "Midnight Ride," according to Sarah Palin


To say that Sarah Palin is stupider than a 5th grader is to insult 5th graders...

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I had no idea that Paul Revere warned the British and did so with bells and gunshots and that the whole "Midnight Ride" thing was about the Second Amendment.

But that's what Sarah said, and she must know her history given how much she loves America and all, and how she knows so much about the Tea Party and talks about the Foundin' and everythin':

He who warned, uh, the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed.

And she said this in Boston.

Thanks for clearing this up for us, Sarah. I guess we'd all just gotten it wrong these many years.


Check out the hilarious deadpan reaction of CNN's Brooke Baldwin: 


For more, check out Booman and Benen, as well as MoJo's Tim Murphy, who notes that:

This is actually the opposite of everything Paul Revere did. He wasn't sending any messages to the British soldiers who were about to move on the patriots' weapons stockpiles and arrest key leaders. According to history, Revere was warning the Minutemen that the Brits were coming so these militia members could prepare. He did not ring any bells. He instructed a friend to put either one or two lights in the tower of the Old North Church ("one if by land, two if by sea"). He did not fire any warning shots. His ride at the time was no act of symbolism; it was a stealth operation in support of a local resistance movement whose goals at that point remained largely undefined.

Ah, but that's the real history, what really happened. Palin is living in a land of make-believe, the land of creationism and global warming denialism and a general disdain for science, for facts.

And in that world, that alternate "reality" that is nothing of the sort but that is extremely powerful on the right, Paul Revere, a Tea Party Republican way ahead of his time, did everything just the way Palin said he did.

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posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at 1:01 AM

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5 Comments:

  • Re: when someone posts here claiming that what Palin said is actually true, and Revere did warn the British...

    It seems that the issue is that there were two "warnings." Number one: the famous warning given to various American colonials by Paul Revere, during his ride, that the British Regulars were coming…and number two: the moment when Revere was stopped by British troops, and he warned them of the approach of a group of American soldiers. (This fact was revealed under duress; he was, after all, being held at gunpoint.)
    The first warning is the actual reason for Paul Revere's ride, and is the reason that we still tell the story. The ride was undertaken for the sole purpose of warning the Americans that the British army was coming. This is not debated by anyone, and it is the central fact of the tale.
    So, now we have to ask if Sarah Palin was referring to either the famous warning, or the second incident. Personally, I am not sure which she was thinking of. I doubt that she was talking about the second incident, but I am open to any evidence to the contrary.
    Why do I doubt it? Because none of the statements that follow in her speech make reference to that incident. She asserts that Revere "warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms." And that he did this by "ringing…bells." And that he fired "warning shots" during the ride to inform the British that "we were going to be secure, and we were going to be free." These are Palin's direct words about the "warning," and none of them refer to what happened during the second incident.
    Perhaps more disturbingly, I can't find historical support for any of these statements. It is true that one of the reasons Revere undertook the ride was to prevent the British from seizing arms that the Colonials had stored in Concord. But there is no evidence that he warned the British not to seize those arms.

    By Anonymous Andy, at 1:11 AM  

  • .

    Please; let us not over analyze this.

    Ms Palin in a typical 'ready, fire, aim' moment, opened her mouth, began to speak, and then tried to say something. She is ready, is USA?

    Run, Sarah, Run.

    Ema Nymton
    ~@:o?
    .

    By Blogger Ema Nymton, at 3:39 AM  

  • Yup.

    But the Flying Monkey Corps of the 101st Chairborne has managed to inflate the asterisk to the size of Palin's trailer while shrinking the chapter and verse to the size of a flyspeck.

    When you've got your head that far up your ass, you can probably see your tonsils.

    I haven't laughed that hard since, well, Palin's LAST gaffe.

    To laugh (or cry) until it hurts, see: http://www.memeorandum.com/110603/p136#a110603p136

    ~Hart Williams

    By Blogger ed waldo (Hart Williams), at 7:21 AM  

  • If we put Mrs. Palin's soliloquy back into the context of other recent and less recent proclamations, the fact that she's a narcissistic panderer to the profoundly ignorant who has little care for truth becomes more obvious than the word obvious can really define.

    By Blogger Capt. Fogg, at 9:10 AM  

  • Allow me to quote you, Fogg:

    "She's a narcissistic panderer to the profoundly ignorant."

    Brilliant.

    Any wonder she's still so popular with so many Republicans?

    By Blogger Michael J.W. Stickings, at 4:03 PM  

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