It turns out that KFC is not the only one offering a double down. Sarah Palin has now insisted that she was correct in her description of the ride of Paul Revere. And, yes, we’ve gotten the emails from her supporters and sympathizers saying that her version of history is correct. To those who in emails suggested that this is a liberal, centrist, moderate, media conspiracy to distort history, then kindly go to THIS LINK and inform all of these news organizations. Also go to my original post and check the links and inform those websites as well.
And Palin and her defenders also need to contact the Paul Revere House because AP notes the following:
The Paul Revere House’s website says that on April 18, 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren instructed Revere to ride to Lexington, Mass., to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were marching to arrest them.
But if there is a truism in American politics among some it is a)never admit you’re wrong b)use spin because you can always count on your supporters and those in your political party to readjust what they previously considered reality to come to your defense even though they would lambaste, ridicule or denounce someone in the other political party who said the same thing. History, science — all is relative when it comes to political expediency.’
[UPDATE: And what I wrote above has now been confirmed in the latest manifestation of how to some politics has nothing to do with fact or reality but spin and supporting their candidate: Palin supporters are now trying to edit the Wikipedia Paul Revere page so it matches her version of “history.” DETAILS HERE.This kind of action isn’t funny: it’s downright scary.]
And so you have this exchange between Palin and Fox News’ Chris Wallace:
CHRIS WALLACE: I gotta ask you about that real quickly, though. You realize that you messed up about Paul Revere, don’t you?
PALIN: You know what? I didn’t mess up about Paul Revere. Here’s what Paul Revere did. He warned the Americans that “the British were coming, the British were coming.” And they were going to try to take our arms so got to make sure that, uh, we were protecting ourselves and, uhm, shoring up all of our ammunitions and our firearms so that they couldn’t take them.
But remember that the British had already been there — many soldiers — for seven years in that area. And part of Paul Revere’s ride… And it wasn’t just one ride. He was a courier. He was a messenger. Part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there that, “Hey. You’re not going to succeed. You’re not going to take American arms. You are not gonna beat our own well-armed, uh, persons, uh, individual private militia that we have. He did warn the British.
And in a shout-out, gotcha type of question that was asked of me, I answered candidly. And I know my American history.
I’m looking forward to more of Palin’s history lessons.
Any day now I expect Sarah Palin to talk about how Cincinnati discovered America.
I’m also waiting to hear her talk about George Washington’s vital role in winning the Civil War, which pitted the East against the West and how a military man named General Electric became a hero and later President.
P.S. If you have kids near your computer get off this post fast because if they read it they could flunk the fourth grade.
UPDATE: Rick Unger writing on Forbe’s The Policy Page blog:
Following the Sarah Palin playbook of never admitting error, the ex-governor’s minions are busy flooding the Internet with ’proof’ that Palin did not misspeak when suggesting that Paul Revere warned the British that they would not be taking arms from the colonists during his ride where he, apparently, rung bells and fired muskets.
The effort to back up Palin is based on taking bits and pieces of facts surrounding the historic event that, when cut and pasted together, work to make Palin look a little less befuddled than her actual statement would indicate.
While I give them credit for the effort, I’m afraid that – to any rational person – it is a lost cause…
And further down, his ending:
…..Many politicians, of all political parties, make mistakes in speeches. That would certainly include the President and, even more certainly, the Vice-President.
But what they all tend to have in common is that, once the mistake is brought to their attention, they apologize for their error and set the record straight.
I can only think of two politicians on the scene today who do otherwise.
Michele Bachmann simply clams up after some of her super-goofs and moves on, preferring to rely on the flub being forgotten when the news cycle passes.
Sarah Palin, on the other hand, likes to double-down and dig the hole deeper. Not only does she not apologize for mistakes, she drags it out by defending the errors and encouraging her followers to do the same. She knows that her people believe pretty much anything she says so accuracy is not a high priority to her.
If this is acceptable to you –fine.
Personally, I would prefer our supposed leaders expose the public to actual history rather than the version that suits their political message.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.