TOM THE DANCING BUG: Sarah "Wadsworth" Palin recites "Paul Revere's Ride"

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jeblucas

Occam’s razor leads me to conclude she’s a fucking idiot, obscure 18th century depositions notwithstanding.
Smoobly

Another comic, another yawn.
VagabondAstronomer

Palin’s a blow-hard,she’s proven that so,
Her statements makes one think her IQ is low,
That’s probably her game; she’ll get her facts wrong,
And like they’re her puppets string the media along

Yet, here we still are, discussing this loon,
Who chose to leave office a few years too soon,
To warn all Americans that the end was real near,
And Barack Obama we all should fear

Like a bad penny, she always turns up,
The media still clinging like a love-struck pup,
She’s after attention, it’s certain to say,
Ignore Sarah Palin, and then she’ll go away

(one hopes)
benher

Maybe Percival isn’t in this thread because he’s busy back in colonial America rewriting history.
Anonymous

All Sarah Palin was doing was trying to recite her remembrance of some goofy tour of a tourist attraction. But she has said so many lame things in the past, that people are interpreting her recount as inaccurate. Its actually kind of correct in the way a ditsy high school students recount of some lame field trip would be correct. Paul Revere did keep try to warn the British not to take colonial arms, and did tell people to ring bells. I doubt that, while riding, he spend the time to reload any muzzle loading firearm he might have been carrying and fire it… but it’s a fantastical interpretation of the ride that would look good in the movies.
anharmyenone

Once again, Palin has been vindicated, but will her critics apologize to her? Nope. They have their narrative and the facts don’t matter. It seems you have to speak a certain way and have a certain ivy league pedigree to be considered intelligent. Read the Boston Herald and weep. http://bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view.bg?articleid=1343353 Tim Pawlenty and Herman Cain would make better presidents than Sarah Palin, but she’s a lot smarter than most of the paparazzi–I mean journalists.
- Anonymous
  
  Did you read the article before you posted it?
  
  “Patrick Leehey of the Paul Revere House said Revere was probably bluffing his British captors, but reluctantly conceded that it could be construed as Revere warning the British.
  
  â€œI suppose you could say that,â€ Leehey said. â€œBut I donâ€™t know if thatâ€™s really what Mrs. Palin was referring to.â€
  
  McConville said he also is not convinced that Palinâ€™s remarks reflect scholarship.
  
  â€œI would call her lucky in her comments,â€ McConville said.”
- Anonymous
  
  Having your account turn out to be right by pure chance, thanks to facts you don’t know about, and that only work with a generous interpretation anyways, doesn’t vindicate you. I don’t see anyone pointing out that if you extrapolate historical trends the US will have 57 states some day, so Obama was actually psychic.
- travtastic
  
  I’m confused how someone (and their supporters) can cry ‘Elitism!!1!’, when said someone has an estimated net worth of $10-12 million. When that someone has made a reported $3 million alone from appearing on FNC and having a reality TV show.
  
  With median household income somewhere around $46k a year, her television income alone (assumed from say 2009 on, or two-ish years) puts her at 65 times what a ‘normal’ American makes. This doesn’t even begin to include income from her ridiculous books and speaking fees.
  - travtastic
    
    I actually fudged that a little bit. She’s really only as good as 32.5 normal Americans, going by her TV babbling income.
  - travtastic
    
    Also, interestingly enough, her buffoonery has earned her and her husband approximately what 6 households could expect to make in their entire working lifetimes, assuming 2011-adjusted dollars. Effectively within the last three years.
    
    Or, one household working for 261 years.
- Anonymous
  
  No. Get your history straight. Revere was arrested by British officers and interrogated at gunpoint. At that point, Revere said (in I’m sure a very ‘fuck you’ tone of voice!) that he knew exactly what the British were doing there, that they were a bunch of liars for saying they were hunting for deserters, and that they’d better get ready to get their asses handed to them because he’d already warned the colonists that they were coming.
  
  Here’s Paul Revere’s actual deposition on the events of that night:
  http://masshist.org/revolution/image-viewer.php?item_id=98&img_step=1&tpc=&mode=transcript&tpc=#page1
  
  Palin got it wrong, as usual. She doesn’t care, as usual. She’s trying to spin it as a ‘gotcha’ question, as usual. Meanwhile, she mangles a story that most of us learned in kindergarten and that just about EVERY American citizen knows. One if by land, two if by sea. She got another chance, and she blew it again.
grimc

I retract my earlier conclusion. It may be that the ability to time travel remains the key factor and Dunwoody is simply AWOL, because some idiocy is sprinkled throughout this thread.
thelonmon

WHAT GREAT INSIGHTS ( foresights ) CAN

PERCIVAL DUNWOODY TELL US ABOUT

SARAH PALIN AND PAUL REVERE??

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!
Anonymous

In no way, shape, or for was Palin even remotely referencing anything that happened after Paul Revere was intercepted by the British. Your stupid little article is a canard.
jerwin

By Palin’s standards, Khalid Sheik Mohammed might have warned the Americans.
awjtawjt

Glasses aren’t square enough.

Anyways.

In Paul Revere’s wake, TOWNSPEOPLE rang bells and fired guns into the air to wake up the entire area so that all were prepared for the Red Coats.

Revere was captured, but defiantly told his captors to beware. They released him when they heard the first shots fired at Lexington and realized they needed to be with their regiment. Why they didn’t shoot him on the spot, I’ll save that for another discussion.
GrymRpr

I do so love this.
Anyone care to point out where I said the Alaska attention whore was right?

Anyone?
Thought not.

warnÂ·ing:
1. A statement or event that indicates a possible or impending danger, problem, or other unpleasant situation.

Standby my 1st comment.
- Anonymous
  
  In normal language, when you mention something that could touch on the topic at hand, it’s understood that you are doing so. If you had suddenly decided to give some Paul Revere trivia, completely unrelated to Palin and this comic, it’s your bad for not making it clear. Communicating poorly and acting smug when you’re misunderstood is not cleverness.
- pauldavis
  
  Well now, lessee. On the one hand, we have Palin:
  
  He who warned the British that they weren’t gonna 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 sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed
  
  a statement that has, as we know, received widespread ridicule for its factual inaccuracy.
  
  And then we have your post, which opens:
  
  Seem’s Paul DID Warn the Brits: [... citation elided ... ]
  
  Do you think its unreasonable to add 1+1 and conclude that your opening is sentence is short form for “Hmm, turns out that all this nonsense about Palin not knowing much about Revere is just nonsense, but it seem’s Paul DID Warn The Brits[sic] because after being arrested he remained aggressive and defiant towards his captors”?
  
  And if you standby your first comment and your almost meaningless citation of a definition of “warning”, then presumably you must have a fairly positive opinion of the suggestion from jerwin above that “Khalid Sheik Mohammed might have warned the Americans” (jerwin FTW, BTW)
- knoxblox
  
  Yes, the British were warned. However, appearances make it seem that you overstated it in the first post. Perhaps some clarification on your statement might help?
  Not trying to provoke, just helping to clarify, because of the reaction to your statement.
  
  Revere gave up the information under duress, or he would have been killed by the British infantrymen (he states that despite their claims they would not harm him, he knew better). It was sort of a statement of “Ha ha, everyone knows already, and I’ve beaten you to the punch!”, but maybe not in so much action-movie speak.
  Yes, it was a warning, but not one that came freely.
  
  As for me:
  I think Palin SORT OF got it right, but screwed up in her attempt to formulate a sentence, which made it come out wrong.
  Revere was not armed or carrying a bell, but I’d allow her that because her answer was essentially garbled.
  The townspeople raised the alarms. He simply carried the message, or at least did it part of the way.
  
  Palin understands a few things on at least a basic level, but her skills as a rhetorician are poor. Even if she managed to become POTUS, she’d fail miserably in diplomacy, among other functions that would rely heavily on reason, logic, and ESPECIALLY public speaking.
ill lich

It should be obvious now, but the “lamestream” media plays along with her– she IS running for President. C’mon: a nationwide bus tour on a ridiculous red-white-and-blue bus, constant photo-ops at historic places, a film “documentary” about her set to come out in early primary states first. She even said that IF she were to run for President she wouldn’t do it in the normal mainstream way. Call it what it is.

I bet she just wants to keep her job at Fox News so she plays coy about what she’s up to. Pretty sneaky sis.
- knoxblox
  
  Yeah, many of us said we’d bail and go to Canada or somewhere if Bush Jr. was elected for a second term, but didn’t.
  
  However, Palin as president sounds like a heckuva good reason to jump ship, you betcha!
ill lich

What I find most annoying about this whole incident is that it typifies how Palin uses any possible subject to deliver conservative talking points. This is what her reality TV show was like: everything was a just an opportunity to mention drilling for oil or gun rights or taxes or family values.

I have never heard Paul Revere’s ride used as an argument for the 2nd amendment, since A.) the Constitution didn’t even exist yet, and B.) the British were after very specific “military stores”, including cannons and food (they weren’t going door-to-door confiscating muskets.)

There are a lot of different ways to parse her comment. For example, at the time technically everyone involved was “British” not just the soldiers, so maybe Revere was warning “the British.” Clearly that is not what she meant. She said “Revere was . . . warning the British” (meaning “soldiers”), and that is not what his ride was about at all, in fact he was avoiding the British until they caught him. He was warning the colonials. Period. The fact that Palin is “sorta right” by a technicality does not give me a lot of faith in her intelligence, or at least knowledge of American history.
Mister44

Sybil Ludington was a 16 year old girl who made Paul Revere and Co. look like girly men. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_Ludington
- Anonymous
  
  She had nothing on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Secord, who didn’t have a horse to help her and got a considerably better result.
quicksand

I don’t get it. Palin was wrong? Or she was right, but only because of a technicality that she couldn’t possibly understand?
- Brainspore
  
  Palin was flat-out wrong unless you choose to adopt an extraordinarily generous interpretation of a technical detail that she almost certainly wasn’t aware of at the time. Even if you do, “warning the British” was most definitely not the purpose of Revere’s famous ride.
Antinous / Moderator

Even a broken clock has two arms and a face.
- Anonymous
  
  “Even a broken clock has two arms and a face.” not necessarily, not if you hit it with a hammer hard enough (or if it’s a digital clock)
- Anonymous
  
  Surely a clock has hands.
Anonymous

Weren’t most of the “british” soldiers Hessian mercenaries? So no matter how you interpret events Revere would never have warned the British.
ocschwar

Fun fact: Massachusetts in 1775 had gun control. Specifically, gunpowder had to be stored in powderhouses, for the obvious reason that you do not want to store that stuff in a home where you’ll be lighting candles and cooking meals over a wood fire. The storing of powder in powderhouses was a way to formalize trust between citizens and the state, and when the redcoats started seizing the powder, it was seen as an abrogation of that trust, and therefore triggered the war.
grimc

Did I beat the time traveller?
- Mark Dow
  
  Sarah’s in before you.
  - grimc
    
    Well, at least it reveals that it’s probably not time travelling that’s the key factor, but being an idiot…
    - zENithFisHstiX
      
      Percival Dunwoody is unstuck in time. Oh noes!
      - RadioSilence
        
        So it goes.
- Jake0748
  
  It LOOKS like you did, but he’ll show up ahead of you sooner or later I’ll betcha.
mypalmike

The same minor gaffe, if made by Obama, would have brought extreme criticism from the right, and strong defenders on the left. Let’s try to be objective and focus on the real issues that make Palin less worthy of the presidency than a turnip. This is just petty sound-byte microscopism.
- nemo
  
  I doubt that there would be many on the left who would willing to knee-jerk defend something this stupid, after all many of Obama’s critics are actually on the left, though I am sure some partisan Democrats would defend him. Still, I do agree that we should look at the real issues and not get caught up in this. Palin will never be president. She is one of a number of Republican rodeo clowns who distracts our mass media from the relevant issues of the day by doing and saying absurd and outrageous things.
Anonymous

“Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”

“Ya betcha it wasn’t!”

(Apologies to John Belushi or Harold Ramis)
jacques45

I’m disappointed that nobody from the Commonwealth got close enough to her photo op-tourage to ask if she needed a passport to re-enter “Real America”
Applemask

The rhyme scheme barely works and there seems to be no attempt at scansion, so congratulations on capturing Palin’s voice.
GrymRpr

Seem’s Paul DID Warn the Brits:

Paul Revere’s deposition, fair copy, circa 1775

Manuscript deposition written possibly at the request of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress.
From the manuscript collection, Accounts of his famous ride

http://masshist.org/revolution/image-viewer.php?item_id=98&img_step=1&tpc=&mode=transcript&tpc=#page1
- Avram / Moderator
  
  No, GrymRpr, Revere was arrested by the British and interrogated at gunpoint. He did not, as Palin claimed, warn the British by riding through town ringing bells and firing shots.
  - Anonymous
    
    Making a lot of noise to alert British soldiers would sort of defeat the point of alerting local militias so they could get ready, wouldn’t it?
    
    I hope you aren’t in the military or at least my unit.
    - joeposts
      
      That’s why America remains firmly under British control. Sarah Palin is right, Paul Revere is America’s greatest traitor.
  - Bemopolis
    
    Yes, but what you are overlooking the fact that the British only believed Revere after they teaboarded him.
- Anonymous
  
  he sure was “warning” the Brits- just like KSM journeyed to Gitmo to “warn” the Americans about Al Qeada
- purple-stater
  
  Telling stories to frighten your captors is hardly the equivalent to warning them.
- Anonymous
  
  I’ve heard this argument a couple of times already. Is it really that likely that she was referring to that on purpose? I find that extremely hard to believe.
- Anonymous
  
  Do you honestly think that’s what Palin was talking about, as opposed to a little-known fact that happens to be similar to with what she said?
thequickbrownfox

Wikipedia entry on Paul Revere is currently being hacked by Palinltes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Revere&action=history
cowbell

America has a history filled with brilliant minds and eloquent speakers.
It scares me that half of the country thinks Sarah Palin deserves all that attention.
Anonymous

“Patrick Leehey of the Paul Revere House said Revere was probably bluffing his British captors, but reluctantly conceded that it could be construed as Revere warning the British.

â€œI suppose you could say that,â€ Leehey said. â€œBut I donâ€™t know if thatâ€™s really what Mrs. Palin was referring to.â€ ”
-Chris Cassidy, Boston Herald, http://bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view.bg?articleid=1343353

Sorry, anharmyenone. What am I supposed to read and weep?
Anonymous

Palin reminds me of Revere’s ride. A little light in the belfry.
Chuck

All lies!

He was actually riding a unicorn.
querent

“Lamestream media.”

I’m taking it back.

TOM THE DANCING BUG: Sarah "Wadsworth" Palin recites "Paul Revere's Ride"

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