Via JMG: Palin rewrites history of Revolutionary War. She thinks Paul Revere warned the British.
When I was in eighth grade at Jack Junior High School in Portland, Maine, my English teacher, Rita Moore, made us memorize Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere." All of it. I still remember the first part, which begins:
Listen my children and you shall hearLongfellow was from Portland and anyone who has visited Boston can still see the North Church.
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."
Just about any student of American history knows about Revere's midnight ride to warn about the impending British attack. Not Sarah Palin. Apparently, she was absent that day. The GOP presidential contender (or not) thought Revere was warning the British about something:
Wow. Here's the transcript of how Palin described Paul Revere's famous ride, while visiting the Old North Church in Boston. It appears she was asked something to the effect of, "do you know who Paul Revere was?":
He who warned the, the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms [she pronounces it "are arms"], by ringin' those bells and makin' sure he's ridin' his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free.
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