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May 18, 2013
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 The Revisionist Ride of Paul ReverePosted on Jun 7, 2011Sarah Palin is a fraud with charisma—and enough political support to effectively hold the Republican Party hostage. She is ridiculous and dangerous in equal measure. Palin is certain about everything and knows about nothing. The only true facts are those she recognizes; other facts, when cited to contradict her private truth, are deemed politically motivated. History books are nothing more than weapons used by her enemies in their incessant attacks, their pitiful attempts to play “gotcha.” In her view, she does not make mistakes. Therefore, it may surprise you to learn, this is who Paul Revere was: “He who warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms, 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.” Utter, complete nonsense. The purpose of Revere’s midnight ride was to warn townspeople and patriot leaders that British troops were approaching. He didn’t ring any bells or fire any warning shots; the prearranged signal involved hanging lanterns in the steeple of the Old North Church, one if the redcoats were approaching by land and two if by sea. Advertisement It was comical and weird, like a lot of Palin’s antics, but so what? Anybody can have a momentary lapse and say something dumb in front of a television camera. You laugh it off and move on. Unless you’re Sarah Palin. She appeared on “Fox News Sunday,” and Chris Wallace asked the obvious question: “You realize that you messed up about Paul Revere, don’t you?” He must have expected her to be charmingly self-deprecating. Instead, to Wallace’s evident surprise, she insisted that her ridiculous account was correct. Palin seized on a lesser-known incident during Revere’s ride, when he was captured and briefly held by several British soldiers. He bluffed his way out of his predicament by boasting that 500 well-armed militiamen were up ahead, ready for battle. “Part of his ride was to warn the British that, ‘We’re already there,’ that, ‘Hey, you’re not going to succeed. You’re not going to take American arms. You are not going to beat our own well-armed persons, individual, private militia that we have.’ ” Wallace smiled as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “I didn’t mess up about Paul Revere,” Palin said. “I know my American history.” Yes, you did. And no, you don’t. Anyone who believes that Revere rang bells and fired warning shots simply isn’t going to know—until after the fact—about the encounter with the British soldiers. And in any event, Revere didn’t set out “to warn the British”—he was warning colonists about the British. And he wasn’t making some kind of Second Amendment statement about “American arms” because there was no Second Amendment. And ... Yes, I’m belaboring the obvious. But I’m doing so because the incident says so much about Palin’s arrogant disregard for objective fact. It’s never about the truth. It’s always about Sarah. She told Fox that she was the victim of a “gotcha type of question.” But there is no indication, from video of the encounter, that she was asked specifically about Paul Revere. Her peroration came amid a general recounting of her visit to Boston. The gaffe is understandable—well, almost understandable. But she doubled down with a claim of persecution and a bald-faced lie. That is what we ignore at our peril. This is a small, unimportant matter. But Palin demands to be seen as a big, important person in the nation’s political life. Her party is so afraid of her that the putative front-runner for the presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, won’t even call her out for stealing thunder from his campaign kickoff by just happening to be in the neighborhood, complete with the attendant media circus. The woman, like Lord Byron, is “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” I’d shout it throughout the land, if I could find my horse and my bells.  TAGS:
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By LocalHero, July 1, 2011 at 3:17 am Link to this comment
That awful woman hasn’t the mental faculties to teach the mentally challenged to operate a spoon.
Report thisBy JoeTWallace, June 9, 2011 at 4:21 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Of a political figure much like Sarah Palin, the writer Michael Winship once observed that “he had a mind like the bed in the guest room: always made up and seldom used.”
Report thisBy Maani, June 9, 2011 at 1:54 pm Link to this comment
This is excellent re Revere and his ride:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/09/davis.revere.palin/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Peace.
Report thisBy Joe, June 9, 2011 at 1:14 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Both sides seem stupid in this debate, with the democrats looking slightly more stupid than Palin
Palin was expressing a high concept, however ineptly. She was saying that Revere and the revolutionaries were rebelling against the british thanks to their weapons, and that this sentiment resulted in the second ammendment and the writing in of language supporting future revolutions against the government.
Yes Palin worded it very poorly as usual.
Report thisBut the people who don’t understand the concept at all seem much more foolish to me
By RayLan, June 9, 2011 at 12:36 pm Link to this comment
Palin does get a lot of attention but so does a train wreck.
Report thisBy Inherit The Wind, June 8, 2011 at 8:34 pm Link to this comment
“Listen, my children,
and you shall hear
of Sarah’s mid-day attack
of verbal diarrhea”
Report thisBy Inherit The Wind, June 8, 2011 at 8:25 pm Link to this comment
“Yee-hah! To arms, to arms, the colonists are coming!”
History according to Sarah “Dumber than a pit bull” Palin.
Report thisBy Steve J., June 8, 2011 at 8:05 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
“Die Frau Ohne Schaten” (“The Woman Without a Shadow”)
Report thisBy reynolds, June 8, 2011 at 6:20 pm Link to this comment
of course you love “this woman”. she appeals to your
Report thisinnate dishonesty. the (barely) two of you share a free
wheeling ineptitude unencumbered by scruples, sense or
taste. you should be handcuffed to one another wrist by
ankle and forced to listen to readings from john ward
ostrom’s “better paragraphs”. fuck both of you.
By Go Right Young Man, June 8, 2011 at 5:00 pm Link to this comment
I just LOVE Sarah Palin. I don’t want her as the U.S. President but I do so love her.
The most entertaining aspect of Palin is in how the liberal media do the most to keep her in the spotlight. She’s a Fox News Contributor, sure, but she appears on MSNBC nearly daily.
It’s brilliant. MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, HuffPost, they all hang on Palin’s every word. She’s now bringing in millions of U.S. dollars to her family while riding this massive media wave.
I just love this woman.
Report thisBy Wes Gordon, June 8, 2011 at 4:13 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
She’s right about one thing: the media that follows her around is truly lame-stream.
Report thisBy Maani, June 8, 2011 at 3:53 pm Link to this comment
Well, we have Palin, Ensign, Trump et al making the GOP look like a joke. And we have Weiner, Edwards, et al making the Dems look like a joke. Apparently, though, no one gets the joke!
Report thisBy Inherit The Wind, June 8, 2011 at 2:20 pm Link to this comment
I love it! “I gotta warn the British!” You can’t make this stuff up!
The ignorant trailer-trash half-term gov of Alaska doesn’t have the education of a 4th grader.
Report thisBy Elizabeth Gerhardt, June 8, 2011 at 12:04 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Palin isn’t funny. If she ever got elected all her puppet masters would have to do is keep her supplied with super publicity dog and pony shows and they could do anything they want with this country. Like get enough brown shirts for all the returning troops from the Middle East.
Report thisBy Bill Britton, June 8, 2011 at 11:03 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Yes, Anarcissie, we do have the simulacrum of a monarchy, but I prefer to think of our present center of power an oligarchy, made up of a “captured” regulatory system and Wall Street. If it weren’t for Geithner, Summers, and Rubin’s close association with Goldman Sachs, that investment bank would not have been bailed out. With a clever slight-of-hand, it was turned into a bank holding company, which allowed Goldman to receive bailout money and pay their bankers $15.3 billion in compensation last January. This is a bit removed from Paul Revere, but I get riled up easily. For more detail, read “The Great American Stickup” (Robert Scheer).
Report thisBy Forrest Murray, June 8, 2011 at 10:57 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Ms. Palin has taken the persecuted route from the beginning of her national
Report thispresence. “Please throw me into the briar patch”. Her acceptance speech at the
Republican Convention was a classic of blaming the usual suspects for the
destruction of all she believes in. I am loath to use any comparisons of anyone to
German National Socialists, but that speech was a classic Brown Shirt diatribe. I
imagine that there were many in 1931 who felt that the Brown Shirts were only a
distraction. How wrong they were.
By reynolds, June 8, 2011 at 10:23 am Link to this comment
eugene robinson is a fraud without charisma.
Report thisBy Anarcissie, June 8, 2011 at 8:38 am Link to this comment
An attempt was made at the close of the war to make Washington king, or at least a military dictator, like Cromwell. 99 out of 100 great leaders would have fallen for it, but Washington was a committed liberal and republican and went out of his way to dissuade the proponents of monarchy.
Today, however, we have managed to construct a monarchical presidency whose powers far exceed anything ever held by poor, crazy George III. So the people got their king after all.
Report thisBy jmlambion, June 8, 2011 at 8:10 am Link to this comment
They’re called “gotcha questions” because they “gotcha” saying something that’s
Report thisnot true or something that’s true but personally embarrassing (both, a common
occurrence for Sarah Palin). It’s her ignorance that makes all questions “gotcha”.
Perhaps she should stay hidden in her Twit(ter) bunker where she can safely hurl
her dumb bombs at the world, 140 characters at a time.
By tedmurphy41, June 8, 2011 at 7:47 am Link to this comment
It really doesn’t say much for the quality and principle possessed by the American people who so readily support her.
Report thisBy Lafayette, June 8, 2011 at 7:19 am Link to this comment
An interesting historical fact is that, after the skirmish at Concord and the battle of Bunker Hill (near Boston), there were many a victory shout “Long Live King George Washington!”.
Which indicates how rudimentary was the understanding of both freedom from the British Crown (King George) and also of our infant democracy.
Many Colonists were indeed loyal to the Crown, some even returned to England after the war. Most came about to the notion of a parliamentary democracy ... but only in time.
It also took a while for the idea of a national government to arise - since it took them from the end of the war in 1783 till 1789 to get around to writing a Constitution.
And, to this day, there still remains the infighting between state and federal powers. Nothing has changed there.
Report thisBy BillBritton, June 8, 2011 at 6:18 am Link to this comment
First of all, it’s not likely Paul Revere ever yelled out the words “The British Are Coming” because the areas he rode through often had British army patrols and besides most of the colonials of the time considered themselves British and were loyal to the crown. The purpose of the ride was to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams who were in Lexington at the time. He did inform others along the way but not by yelling in the streets.
Also, Paul Revere was not the only rider to make the trip. William Dawes and Samuel Prescott also made the ride and in fact Prescott was the only one of the three to make it to Concord (the location of their weapons stores where they thought the British army was ultimately headed). Revere was caught and detained by a British patrol and was left horseless to walk back to Lexington.
Revere was barely even known until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published his famous poem in 1863 (it was written in 1860). The poem was never meant to be a “history lesson” but it’s what most Americans remember.
Report thisBy Rigor, June 8, 2011 at 6:08 am Link to this comment
Eugene you did it again, you made nonsense from no
Report thissense.
Yes bells were rung, yes shots were fired, and yes the
brits were intending to confiscate the firearms of the
people.
Palin is getting SO much traction when you try to
disprove anything she says - let it go finally. Or
continue to give her free advertising. Your call.
By BillBritton, June 8, 2011 at 4:48 am Link to this comment
Gene,
Your friend Chris Matthews predicts that Sarah Palin is plotting to have Pawlenty as the Republican nominee. Another possibility is that none of the candidates will have enough votes to secure the nomination and result in a deadlock. Palin might then step forward to announce her candidacy and would probably win by acclamation.
Report thisBy THX 1133 is not in the movie..., June 7, 2011 at 6:40 pm Link to this comment
Anarcissie, June 7 at 5:34 pm
Report thisWhile you all are carrying on about Palin, I wouldn’t
be surprised if something more serious crept up behind
you and made a good try at having you for lunch.
====================================
LOL, hilarious and right on…
By cadawa, June 7, 2011 at 6:09 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Sociopaths never apologize. They don’t care about anything or anyone but themselves. They have a blatent disregard for truth and it is all about them.
Report thisThey also happen to very adept at being charming and manipulating people.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28256.htm
The monied elite that prop her up and pay to have the media glorify her are no better.
By Anarcissie, June 7, 2011 at 5:34 pm Link to this comment
While you all are carrying on about Palin, I wouldn’t be surprised if something more serious crept up behind you and made a good try at having you for lunch.
Report thisBy JJW, June 7, 2011 at 5:06 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
We all know her MO. Make idiotic statement or bald-faced lie. Get caught. Play victim. Ask for donation. Repeat the nonsense.
Report thisBy Jimnp72, June 7, 2011 at 4:06 pm Link to this comment
Her party fears her and is afraid to call her on her constant lying and unparalleled arrogance. her ‘fans’ actually try to rewrite history.
Report thisthis is the stuff of which future dictators are made..
By Artful Dodger, June 7, 2011 at 2:46 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I think the national arena somehow ruined Sarah Palin. Before her national renown, Mama Grizzly was known for giving the oil companies in Alaska what for. As governor, she rammed through the Juneau legislature an increase on oil royalties that Alaskans enjoy in the form of increased Alaskan state dividend checks to this day. According to a 2008 article in the Seattle Times, a windfall tax on oil gave Alaskans an extra $1,200 on top of a $2000 annual check they already received. I think the Washington, DC arena is naturally corrupting. I don’t see her as a naturally good speaker, and she just did better as medium sized trout in a smaller pond.
Report thisBy rico, suave, June 7, 2011 at 2:43 pm Link to this comment
“Sarah Palin is a fraud with charisma”
PLEASE repeat that. Over and over and over and over.
Sarah- please go back to Alaska. You’re an embarassment, “ya naw”
Report thisBy California Ray, June 7, 2011 at 2:00 pm Link to this comment
On the other hand, I have read the following that seem to support Palin’s version.
Report this* In 1775, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and all the other Massachusetts colonists were British.
* When Paul Revere’s midnight message got through, it was immediately relayed to the communities via bell ringing and alarm shots being fired.
* One of Revere’s objectives was to reach Concord to warn that the King’s Regulars were en route to confiscate the revolutionaries’ arsenal there.
By Bacilo de Koch, June 7, 2011 at 1:03 pm Link to this comment
Mr. Robinson,
You forget that facts are no longer important. Politicians can just make any
statement, crazy as it might be, and stick to it. Nobody seems to be interested in
calling it out.
For Chris Wallace to just sit there and smile, well, it is Fox, so to be expected.
Report thisWhat is he supposed to do? Contradict the star of his network and make her look
stupid? He’d be fired. But why does Brian Williams on the Nightly News just
report the incident with a chuckle and never bother to point out that Palin was in
fact wrong? That would have not been a statement of opinion, therefore should
not have been a problem, but no. Just can’t do it.
By Inherit The Wind, June 7, 2011 at 12:35 pm Link to this comment
The fact that Sarah Palin isn’t viewed and treated as some sort of lobotomized Lyndon LaRouche says that Americans are shallow because they show the MSM that this is what they want to see, what they call “news” and therefore whatthe ADVERTISERS wang.
Report thisBy SarcastiCanuck, June 7, 2011 at 11:27 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Eugene,is it really Sarah Palin that bothers you or the fact that the country you are proudly part of, may elect her president?We all now know Sarah’s credentials and i.q. so this recent Paul Revere incident isn’t all that much of a surprise.I think that what bothers you is the fact that if she is elected,America will become a laughing stock for at least 4 years and possibly 8.MAybe you should send Ms.Palin some historical pop up books so she can better represent America on the world stage.
Report thisBy ribbie149, June 7, 2011 at 10:56 am Link to this comment
The Republican’t fascination with Palin is part of
Report thistheir growing tendency toward self-destruction. If
only the media would report her idiocy in equal measure
with her “bus tour”.