Sarah Palin fans are engaging in revisionist history—literally, this time.
On Friday we wrote, along with the rest of the internet universe, about Sarah Palin’s completely incorrect account of Paul Revere’s midnight ride warning of impending British military action on American colonists.
Commenting on the article on our Facebook page, reader Monica White said, “It really isn’t funny – if a lie is repeated enough times and enough people believe it, it becomes the accepted truth. Most common people are lazy thinkers and [they] will never challenge subtle changes to an account of a historical event.”
As if on cue, over the weekend Palin’s supporters began editing the Wikipedia page for Paul Revere with a technicality that made it consistent with Palin’s fatuous account of Paul Revere history.
Little Green Footballs noticed that a text update reading “Most colonial residents at the time considered themselves British as they were all legally British subjects” was deleted, because the update cited as its source a particular Sarah Palin recounting of Paul Revere’s ride: “Content not backed by a reliable sources (it was sarah palin interview videos).”
The term “revisionist history” has a way of popping up around Tea Party conservatives, whether it’s Michele Bachmann praising the Founding Fathers for “working tirelessly until slavery was no more” (a complete fallacy) or Palin re-telling history with Paul Revere warning the British instead of his fellow colonists along his midnight ride.
Palin appeared on Fox News Sunday and insisted “British soldiers [were] in the area for years before Revere’s legendary ride, and…he was warning them, as well as his fellow colonists,” according to Huffington Post.
It appears that, according to some credible historians, there is some fine print in the midnight ride story about Revere also admonishing some British that they were in for a fight.
But the bigger issue here, as Monica White astutely points out, is how digital culture assimilates and keeps its memories. Being peer-edited, Wikipedia paradoxically has both less authority than any singular expert and more.
Via the “wisdom of the crowds” (or “efficient market theory” as it’s known in economics) Wikipedia gains the power of consensus. But when expertise was disseminated via the printed word, consensus tended to be relatively static, and stable through the ages. No matter how many times you go back and read an influential book it still says the same thing. Wikipedia, however, is constantly morphing and evolving. It reflects status quo, rather than creating it.
On the surface, Palin’s revisionist swipe at Paul Revere’s ride, which subtly imposes a 2nd Amendment narrative years before there was even a Constitution, is a trite bit of silliness. But it’s actually pretty profound—it’s all about mainstream access to objective reality. It’s not that different than trying to get North Koreans to believe that their country is the “2nd happiest place on earth.”
Luckily for us, the consensus is still wise enough to prevent Palin’s version of history from entering the history books. And speaking of forgotten history, let’s take a moment to remember this:
June 06, 2011 at 10:22 pm, Fred said:
“It appears that, according to some credible historians, there is some fine print in the midnight ride story about Revere also admonishing some British that they were in for a fight”
Fine print? It’s written by Paul Revere, in his own hand.
June 06, 2011 at 10:42 pm, Stan said:
Sarah Palin takes the point out of context. Paul Revere’s mission was not, in any part, to warn the British. He was trying not to be captured. It wasn’t until after he was captured and held at gunpoint that he admonished the British that they were in for a fight…apparently inflating the numbers of the actual colonial militia in an attempt to dissuade them from pursuing.
Just because Sarah Palin stumbled across a portion of a fact within her fairy tale version of the story does not make the entirety of the story true.
June 06, 2011 at 10:42 pm, Stan said:
Sarah Palin takes the point out of context. Paul Revere’s mission was not, in any part, to warn the British. He was trying not to be captured. It wasn’t until after he was captured and held at gunpoint that he admonished the British that they were in for a fight…apparently inflating the numbers of the actual colonial militia in an attempt to dissuade them from pursuing.
Just because Sarah Palin stumbled across a portion of a fact within her fairy tale version of the story does not make the entirety of the story true.
June 06, 2011 at 10:42 pm, Tammy said:
This woman is a walking talking SNL skit. What an idiot.
June 07, 2011 at 12:10 am, BOB said:
THERE IS NO END TO PALIN’S STUPIDITY,SHE IS NOT “SMARTER THAN A 5TH GRADER” . I AM MOST CONCERNED ABOUT THOSE AMERICANS WHO WILL TAKE HER WORD AS GOSPEL. HOW IN THE WORLD CAN EDUCATED AMERICANS VIEW HER AS A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE!
June 07, 2011 at 1:14 am, Swilliamrex said:
Almost nothing that flies out of that stupid cows mouth surprises me any more. This is the Digital Age, and while on one hand, it is hard to fool everyone all the time, it is good enough just to fool and excite a large enough crowd or the right people to make funky things happen. In 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, it was control of the media, either denying the objective view quality time, or by overwhelming the population with misinformation and “bread and circuses”.
And look at our society now…with a few keystrokes, you can change and revise history any way you like. Fox News runs stories that Obama is a muslim-commie liberal-terrorist, and the target audience takes it as gospel. Hitler got into power by essentially using his age’s version of the soundbite…He told the German people what they wanted to hear, and played on their ancient fears and pride of past glories. Once he got into power, the plan went into overdrive, even schoolboys were indocrinated soldiers-in-waiting for the Third Reich (the Hitler Youth).
It is up to all of us, WE the PEOPLE, to keep these so-called leaders in check…whether it is at the ballot box, at the picket line, or just by picking up a paper and reading the news. We only have ourselves to blame if we let these individuals run our lives.
June 07, 2011 at 3:18 pm, Bill said:
Another Palin hater. Yes, she should stay away from subjects she is not versed in. The British were in Boston so why warn the British. Revere was only one of several messengers warning of the British movement to seize arms at Lexington and Concord.
Revere was a prominent citizen so he got recognized and became the symbol of the rebellion. Even in the 18th Century PR and the spin on events was common. Perhaps he really did not say “The British are coming”. Who really knows – I wasn’t there.
June 08, 2011 at 1:30 am, Anonymous said:
Sarah Palin is funny. Some people will follow here anywhere, but only out of curiosity. Nobody that clueless can get elected to anything, but she is making a ton of money for being a rock. That’s a pretty special talent.
June 08, 2011 at 3:15 pm, Anthony said:
A couple of other classic Palin lines are about Africa being a country, instead of a continent with 54 different countries. She also says “The Statue of Liberty was gifted to us by foreign leaders really as a warning to us to stay unique and to stay exceptional from other countries. Certainly not go down the path of other countries that adopted socialist policies”. These two inaccurate statements don’t even begin to scratch the surface of how clueless she is. I don’t dislike her and I think she is smarter than some of us think. I do think she represents the average American that is very uninformed about what’s going on in our government and the world. Also, those of us that buy into the American exceptionalism about how much better we are than every other country and can’t even believe or think we have shortcomings that need to be addressed. She speaks of socialism, but then wants the government to oppose the right of a woman to choose and keep beating a dead horse that was resolved more than 38 years ago. I’m sure she wouldn’t have wanted the government to deny her the right to carry her last child to term, because he has special needs that may burden tax payers a good portion of his life. She’s not against the wall street bail out of the big banks and securities firms that caused the mess, yet the small business owner and average citizen doesn’t get a bail out and has no lobby working on their behalf. This is what happens when you have 1% of the population controlling more than 90% of the wealth. The sad part is that most of Americans are oblivious to all of this. That’s the reason Republicans want to keep tired old issues like abortion and gay marriage in the forefront, while pandering to the divisive religious right.
June 16, 2011 at 10:43 pm, Jimmie Cranford said:
You would actually be very surprised to find just how many people DO believe Africa is a country. I have just returned from spending a year there with the military and have found pastors, teachers and even managers of business’ under the assumption that it is a continent.
All of us, no matter how intelligent we think we are, make mistakes with the way we describe things or when we are placed under the spotlight. Even our current president once told a reporter that his campaign had visited all 57 states. I am pretty sure he meant that he had visited 57 states during his campaign (Alaska being not one of those, by the way) but it none the less made some think he himself was stupid.
Sarah Palin has been under the microscope since the day McCain announced she was his running mate and has been the whipping dog of the media ever since (as well as a multitude of others for various, and sometimes obvious reasons) and no matter what she says they use that as cannon fodder for their attacks.
“I can see Russia from my backdoor!”, she once told Katie Couric. I once had a geography teacher in junior high say that there are places in Alaska where the land mass is not very far from Russia and on a good day you can almost see it, with the aid of a strong pair of binoculars. I am sure she was making a reference about the fact that her being governor the state of Alaska IS her backdoor.
Bottom line, if people would look at all that is said by EVERY politician out there and use the same brand of criticism for them as they do Palin then none of them would be reelected. Just saying!
June 08, 2011 at 3:44 pm, Marji said:
This bubble-head is an embarrassment to the many educated, savvy women in this country who truly would make great leaders/politicians. She is no more than a prety face. She has proven on numerous occasions that she knows basically nothing about history, law, politics, economics. The right-wingers tend to forget that she quit as governor of Alaska!! In addition to the fact she’s uninformed and ignorant of facts, she has a very abrasive/annoying voice that hurts my ears!! Sarah, please go away, please, please, please.
June 08, 2011 at 6:32 pm, Becca said:
There is a good reason that Wikipedia is not an acceptable resource when presenting research…not even in most High Schools…it is not peer reviewed…only public viewed.
June 08, 2011 at 6:38 pm, Anonymous said:
So what is this guy talking about?
Oh he is talking about the fact that the Paul Revere page is reflecting more of Paul Reveres own personal account of the Midnight Ride, instead of the historically inaccurate Longfellow Poem.
Revisionism!