Film At Eleven

Did you hear on the news? The former governor of Alaska was in Boston and said something ignorant about Paul Revere. If you're a lefty like me you couldn't miss it. Every blog and news source covered it comprehensively. Even Fox News took her to task. Seems like given a chance the right wing news machine will eat it's own young.

If you follow my Google Shared Items Feed you saw the story. I think I linked to Jezebel or one of the other Gawker sites. I too took the moment to revel in the ignorance.

But there's a problem. One of the righty blogs I follow occasionally had a historian evaluate what she said, and if you can get passed the grammar it wasn't too far from the truth. While on the night of the "one if by land" ride he might not have trash talked to the British or fired warning shots or rang bells, and on that night maybe the troops weren't coming to seize colonial weapons all of those things were in play at the time.

I mean the quote came less than ten minutes after she left the Old North Church where I am sure a guide who knows more of the intricacies of the Paul Revere story than most of us probably laid it all out. The the Mama Grizzly's retelling was typically more detailed than you might normally hear is probably due to that.

I have a different media strategy I'd like to see employed. Next time that bus turns up someplace, don't cover it; and the next time someone on that bus says something, don't cover that either. You're not going to convince any of your readers to vote against her, they're already going to do that and while your not helping your cause at all you're providing free publicity for her to those that might vote for her.

Stop doing that.