The Silly Season Is Upon Us
“Conservatives” of the Tea Party variety are wandering the land and annoying people with their ignorance on display.
The first national leader of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, gave them sage advice: “It is better to be silent, and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.” It is a paraphrase of Proverbs 17:28, “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.”
Alas, the lure of the microphone is too much and the ignorance gushes forth.
Having screwed up the meaning of the Boston Tea Party [it was a protest against a corporate tax cut], now you have another citizen of Boston, the silversmith, Paul Revere, working for the British‽
I don’t think it’s great poetry, but Henry Wadsworth Longfellow did supply the narrative. I must conclude that a good portion of the people currently running for the Presidency of the United States have failed Sesame Street.
6 comments
It’s hard to believe when she talks like such a retard, but she’s right:
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2011/06/so-now-all-these-people-will-apologize.html
One could forgive the odd mistake but with Palin it seems that she is just one gaffe after another
That was interesting Frederick, but the presented narrative leaves off the other two riders who escaped, the fact there was no militia waiting because the militia and arms were at Concord, and the roadblock stopped Revere before Concord.
Dr Samuel Prescott actually avoided the roadblock and alerted the militia in Concord, who then marched towards Lexington to engage the British.
Revere knew well and good that the militia hadn’t been warned, and was BS-ing his interrogators. Revere’s job was to alert Sam Adams and John Hancock in Lexington. The ride from Lexington to Concord was a personal decision of Revere, Dawes, and Prescott.
Revere’s Ride was not critical because multiple riders were sent, no one individual was actually key to the alert. Dawes went to Lexington via a different route in case Revere was stopped. Prescott was on “personal business” in Lexington and wasn’t actually an official rider.
The poem is lacking in a lot of historical accuracy, but it is closer to the reality, than what the former governor of Alaska said.
Oh, Revere penned three different versions of the ride. He came out looking good in all of them, and Dawes and Prescott seem to have been forgotten. OTOH, he was an excellent silversmith, and his shift to copper in later years has provided a fine line of pots and pans. [The Revere works are still in Rome, NY]. Perhaps, most importantly, he understood public relations.
Frederick, I almost never write about the former governor, because I don’t think she is all that important, but when people attacked her for saying that you can see Russia from Alaska, I wrote a long piece pointing out that she was correct, that in fact, you can see Russia, at several points, from Alaska.
Alaska was a former Russian colony, and a form of Russian is still spoken in some areas. There are multiple commercial and cultural ties between Russia and Alaska.
I don’t just recklessly attack everything she says, but I am getting extremely tired of the so-called “conservatives” re-writing my family’s history to suit their prejudices. The official version of American history is already defective enough with all of the cheerleading in most high school textbooks, without another group distorting it further.
“… already defective enough with all of the cheerleading in most high school textbooks…”
… aided by the Texas SBOE, which no longer confines itself to curriculum fiction. If your kid is taught bullshit in Florida or California, it likely was first shoveled in Texas at a SBOE meeting.
I’m not sure schools will have the money for textbooks this year, so it is a secondary concern.