Posted on 06/06/2011 6:55:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
One if by land, and two if by sea … and then what? According to historians interviewed by the Boston Herald, Paul Revere then warned the British not to challenge a roused and armed populace. That came as news to many observers who had rushed to criticize Sarah Palin for her response to a gotcha question at the Old North Church:
Sarah Palin yesterday insisted her claim at the Old North Church last week that Paul Revere “warned the British” during his famed 1775 ride — remarks that Democrats and the media roundly ridiculed — is actually historically accurate. And local historians are backing her up.
Palin prompted howls of partisan derision when she said on Boston’s Freedom Trail that Revere “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.”
The first to dispute Palin’s critics was … Paul Revere himself. In his own account of the ride, written twenty-three years later, Revere recounts how the British captured him, and how he attempted to dissuade the British from advancing. Revere warned that he had roused the local militias and that there would soon be 500 or more armed citizens coming together to repel the British.
A Boston University history professor told the Herald that Revere did indeed warn the British as well as the Americans earlier in his ride:
Boston University history professor Brendan McConville said, “Basically when Paul Revere was stopped by the British, he did say to them, ‘Look, there is a mobilization going on that you’ll be confronting,’ and the British are aware as they’re marching down the countryside, they hear church bells ringing — she was right about that — and warning shots being fired. That’s accurate.”
Of course, Revere wasn’t planning on getting captured. He and others riding to the alarm (William Dawes and Samuel Prescott) wanted to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of British action first, and rouse the militia second. Dawes and Prescott managed to elude the British and complete the mission, but Revere was captured. Furthermore, his warnings sufficiently rattled the British that they let him go — but without his horse. He returned on foot to Lexington, where he managed to hide a trunk with Hancock’s letters to keep it from being captured, but missed the battle.
Andrew Malcolm notes the “faux gaffe” and gives a history of such in the media:
This phenomenon is actually not a new one in American politics, although its immediate spread is obviously hastened by the Internet. Speaking of which, Al Gore did not invent it. Nor did he claim to, as often as you’ve heard otherwise.
In 1999, the hapless former journalist, who should have known to make a better word choice, told CNN that in Congress he “took the initiative in creating the Internet.”
Democrat Gore never used the word “invented.” That was part of another willful misinterpretation that fit expectations of Gore’s boasts and was gleefully spread by opponents as further proof of his unseemly hubris. It lives on to this day.
Perhaps you remember how one day during a photo op President George H.W. Bush was overheard asking a store checkout clerk how this price scanner thing worked?
That quote was immediately transmitted as proof of how disconnected that Republican chief executive was, that he had no knowledge of something as ordinary as a checkout scanner.
The fact is, asking such inane and often obvious questions as “what are you doing here?” is a bipartisan ploy used by politicians to fill the awkward time void they are hanging around someone working while photographers snap their photos several hundred times.
Frankly, I had forgotten much of the history of Revere’s ride until this incident, and I had to look it up for myself to recall what Palin meant by her response. Tom Burnam covered it succinctly and accurately in his indispensable Dictionary of Misinformation, a book I have had on my shelf for more than 30 years. If all people know of Revere is Longfellow’s poem, which is what the reaction to Palin’s remarks seem to show, then they know far less than they think.
What an interesting dodge to the point that I made. You do realize what you are doing is logically fallacious right? And “serial Palin hater”? Really now? So pointing out a fact makes one a serial hater? When did we go into the realm of cult of personality worship?
As for whole I support ... it is totally irrelevant but I support Cain.
Revere didn’t say “The British are coming”. He said “The Regulars are coming. Sarah’s account of Revere’s Ride I think is typical of someone who isn’t a person from the Boston area over the age of 50.
I’d also like to have heard Barack Obama’s account of the Battle of the Alamo.
Good Lord.
Here are the sum total of Sarah Palin quotes on this topic. Please data-mine the above to show me where she says PAUL REVERE HIMSELF used bells and gunshots to warn the British.
Note on the second quote, she does not say "HE WARNED", implying Revere, she said "HE WHO WARNED", implying another person or persons.
And the part about riding through town, the sentence structure and facts about horseback riding certainly shows that the riding through the town CAUSED the bells and gunshots. Even a Palin-Derangement-Syndrome Sufferer would have to admit that riding on a horse and ringing a church bell are mutually exclusive activites.
Phrasing is really the key.
Revere did not intend to warn the British. Only having done so under interrogation after his capture. Something in an area that annually recreates Revere’s Capture and the ensuing battles at Lexington Green and up thru Minuteman National Park to Concords’ Old North Bridge, would be aware of.
It’s a bit like going to Texas and talking about Mexican defeat from the Alamo.
“The lie is already folklore now. And that’s the way the lib media rolls.”
///
sadly, i very much agree with you. My Boss is a big Palin supporter, yet believed she was wrong about Revere.
the internet is great. but millions of good honest Americans still get news from MSM and believe it...
(like MSM reporting as accurate, the blatant lie by Pelosi claiming Obama created millions of jobs...)
how to change that? i don’t know. wish i did!
MSM has to pucker and suck it up again,the poor S.O.B.’s never learn.
True, in the minds of the steadily diminishing crowd of diminished intelligence slugs who get their opinions from Brian Williams and the perky Katie Couric. The percentage of the population which could care less what Williams, Couric and Blitzer are vomiting from their pie holes is day-by-day getting larger. Take heart!
Only a blind apologist would try to say that she wasn’t suggesting that Revere himself warned the British with bells and gunshots.
However, that’s irrelevant, because even using your timeline she still gets it wrong. You make it sound as if there were bells and gunshots going off as Revere rode through the towns. That simply isn’t what happened. There were no bells or gunshots until after Revere had already been captured. His only warning was to exaggerate the strength of the British troops. The bells and gunshots didn’t come until after Revere was in British hands.
Both sides are simply wrong here. Palin was wrong in her rendition, and her critics were wrong in believing that Paul was never captured or exaggerated the strength of the colonial forces to his interrogators.
Trying to play a game where you give your favorite person a complete pass simply because you like her, makes you no better than the leftists who worship Obama and give him a pass on his many gaffes.
That said, I think anyone relentlessly hammering her on this topic has got some PDS, or at least some preconceived notions about Palin. I will note that she needs to slow down and utter only fully-formed sentences.
Even if I shared her 'feelings', I'd rather have an "idiot" who is right than the current thieving idiot we have in the hut at 1600 PA Ave.
But then, believing what one sees in the MSM is becoming a one-question intelligence test.
Note to Sarah - No more nuanced answers to the ignoramuses in Big Media.
"The problem with Internet quotations is that many are not genuine." -- Abraham Lincoln
“Only a blind apologist would try to say that she wasn’t suggesting that Revere himself warned the British with bells and gunshots.”
I like Sarah Palin but watching the video it’s clear that she was uncomfortable and struggling for an answer. The result was a very poor one that failed to hit the main point. Revere rode to warn the COLONISTS that the redcoats were coming. By focusing her answer on what may have been a minor goal, she certainly gave the impression she was unaware of the real purpose.
“Historians agree: Palin was right about Paul Revere”
If you asked 50 historians about the significance of the Old North Church and Paul Revere’s ride, how many do you think would focus on warning the Redcoats?
Paul Revere also assisted Obama's uncle in liberating Auschwitz.
Well done, Laz.
You would think someone in the Media would catch on that they are being set up. Sarah researches some relatively obscure fact that on the face of it runs counter to conventional wisdom. The leftists and MSM pounces on it, saying it proves that Sarah is ignorant, stupid, etc. Then they find out that she was right all along.
At the time almost everyone that heard Paul Revere were BRITISH. Even Paul Revere at the time was British.
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