Sarah Palin's bus-ride tale of Paul Revere – with apologies to Longfellow
Sarah Palin’s “One Nation” bus tour is traveling up through New England, and if you didn’t hear, the ex-Alaska governor had a bit of a moment when she stopped at Paul Revere’s House in Boston on Thursday.
Asked to expound on the importance of Revere’s famous ride to rouse the countryside from Boston to Lexington and Concord on the night of April 18, 1775, Ms. Palin mangled history a bit.
Among other things, she said Revere warned the British (although to be fair his ride served as a wake-up call to the Redcoats that fighting in the colonies was going to be tougher than they’d thought), and that bells and shots alerted the Middlesex farmers. It was actually lights and shouting, as anybody who’s read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem on this subject knows.
Longfellow himself distorted things, of course. Among other things he centered the whole thing on Revere, cutting a couple of other riders out of the credit.
So, with apologies to Longfellow’s descendents, we offer our rhymed take on the Palin version of this seminal event in the American Revolution:
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of Sarah Palin’s tale of Paul Revere.
On the second of June, in twenty-eleven,
She put pundits in TV heaven,
As far from the facts her words did veer.
She said to a crowd: “He warned the British
They wouldn’t be takin’ our guns away.
He rang those bells lickity-splittish
As he rode his horse though town, hooray!
And he also sent out warning shots
To show that security, we’d have lots,
And that Americans were gonna be free,
As all of us armed we were gonna be,
One gun by land, and two if by sea"!
And on to the next stop rode Sarah Palin;
And so to the next stop went her entourage, too.
Greta Van Susteren stuck to them like glue.
A tour for publicity (not that she’s running),
More stops in New Hampshire (is that Romney moaning?)
The “One Nation” tour rolls on in the gloaming.
For, borne on the right wing of the Party,
Annoying the haters who think they’re so smarty,
As the other contenders bore voters to tears,
Ms. Palin distracts them. That’s what Newt fears.
