I used to not fear Sarah Palin — but after her recent refudiation of what really happened during Paul Revere’s famous ride — I am beginning to become uncomfortable with the incredible amount of positive press she’s getting for being wrong about almost everything she claims to be factual.
Where this Palin miasma gets scary is when the mainstream media refuses to call her on her factual errors. They are enabling her because she sells newspapers and glues eyes to television sets.
When she is given honorific media coverage she does not deserve, we risk her presidency as the unwashed and the uniformed are exposed to her intellectual pabulum filtered through, and then gussied up by, mainstream newspapers and television shows.
When you have Palin fanatics furiously trying to edit the Wikipedia page about Paul Revere’s ride so the historical “facts” match precisely what Palin wrongly claimed — we are all soon in for a world of hurt — because what we know as a nation is being slowly unwound and rewritten for political purposes and not intellectual honesty; and this isn’t just happening on Wikipedia and in the New York Times and Fox News, but in Church pews and street corners and bars and kitchens where those who know better have no platform to correct the lie.
We get the truth we deserve, and it’s looking more and more like we’re going to get a Palin presidency if we are not proactive, astute, corrective, and careful.
Here’s some of the wacky conversation on the Wikipedia Talk page debating the Palin-inspired changes to Paul Revere:
In the article on Paul Revere, someone has added false information in an effort to support Sarah Palin’s FALSE claims about Paul Revere.
“Accounts differ regarding the method of alerting the colonists; the generally accepted position is that the warnings were verbal in nature, although one disputed account suggested that Revere rang bells during his ride.[8][9]”
This must be removed as it is a LIE designed to mislead. dj
Dajames (talk) 14:46, 5 June 2011 (UTC)A lie? If you follow Wikipedia’s rules, we must maintain a WP:NEUTRAL position, representing the mainstream position as well as disputed versions. I think the addition represents this fairly — the mainstream position is that Revere’s warnings were verbal, but there are differing accounts that the warnings were done with bells — with two sources: WDHD television plus a live interview, with a highly influential US politician relating these facts.–Tomwsulcer (talk) 14:50, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
Done. Thank you, I removed the content not backed by a reliable source. –CutOffTies (talk) 14:52, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
I kindly remind people that it’s not our job here at Wikipedia to decide what’s true, but to report what reliable sources say, such as the LA Times, WDHD TV in Boston, numerous others. And they quoted an American politician saying that bells were used. –Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:09, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
Shocking! What gall! What liars! The “highly influential US politician relating these facts” they are trying to wedge into the Revere history on Wikipedia — is Palin herself! Her fanatics want her lie broadcast on television to become the new truth of Paul Revere’s ride. Revolting!
That Paul Revere Wikipedia page has been locked — for now — to discourage future changes, but these Palin Bots will not give up and they will not surrender.
What about the rest of us?
Do we fight these revisionists?
Or do we applaud Palin — as the New York Times did two days ago — by giving her a splashy photograph and a love letter posing as a news article?
Do we care that CBS news is pressing her to run against Obama with slanted PR posing as news reporting?
Andrew Sullivan gets Palin dead right:
Pundits speak of her lack of professional organization. What they don’t speak of so often is her willingness to say and do things very few politicians will. She will play the race card powerfully, often and repeatedly. She will run a campaign against Obama as an un-American. She will run on hatred of elites, will turn every sad gaffe, lie or untruth into “truth,” she will deploy religious motifs more effectively than any Republican candidate in modern times. In the last campaign she accused Obama of being a friend of terrorists, and was prevented from using Jeremiah Wright in the last few weeks of the campaign. She will make the Willie Horton ad look like happytalk.
Most responsible politicians do not throw gasoline on a cultural tinderwood. But remember Tucson. Even then, she could show no restraint, no regret, no responsibility. Even when a politician was shot in the head, she tried to divide and conquer. And the MSM have no idea how to handle her, how to cope with her, how to expose her. She destroyed them last time and somehow perpetuated the meme that they destroyed her. This is a dangerous, dangerous person.
We’ve been warned.
We know what she’s up to and what she wants.
Now — what are we going to do about her?