It was probably Sunday or Monday when the lefties started tittering about Sarah Palin’s visit to the Old North Church.

And “tittering” was all they managed.  Even Erik Black, one of the phalanx of “deans of Minnesota political journalism”, was reduced to embedding a “ThinkProgress” flakvid without any additional commentary – which is, in and of itself, a pointed commentary on the regional leftymedia.

Jill  Burcum, editorial writer for the Strib, is seemingly being groomed to take Lori Sturdevant’s place in the “smug, entitled DFLer” slot on in the stable of columnists.

And she boldly strode where no talking head had gone before.

During a visit this week to Boston, she recounted a twisted take on Paul Revere’s historic ride. In a nearly incoherent stream of phrases full of folksy dropped “g’s” (ringin’ those bells, warnin’ shots), Palin appears to have said that Revere warned the British, when in fact he warned Americans about the British.

I’m a kidder; I kid. Burcum followed the same narrative the entire leftysphere follows. up and down its chain of command, from Media Matters down through the Strib’s editorial row to the Twin Cities’ leftyblogosphere; “Wimmins who are conservative are teh stoopid”.

With the dropped g’s and the history flub, Palin is such a caricature of herself that it’s hard to tell if this now-viral video is a Saturday Night Live skit or the real thing.

For whatever reason, Burcum comes back to Palin’s accent over and over in this piece – to a degree that I’d call “a Saturday Night Live skit”, if SNL ever did skits about Midwestern editorial writers so desperate to confirm their parochial need to feel superior that they have to resort to catcalling someone’s accent.

And I have a hunch you could look in vain through Jill Burcum’s entire clipfile in vain, trying to find any mocking of Hillary Clinton’s artificial swerves into “Sista” slang, or President Obama’s curious habit of slipping out of his Ivy-League pronunciation into a phony “Black” patois, when speaking in front of black audiences.

Revere, according to historical documents, was captured by the British. Under questioning, sometimes with a gun to his head, Revere said he had warned revolutionary forces that the redcoats were coming.

Arguments that this means he warned the British, as Palin defenders claim, are more than a stretch. That Palin had that detailed level of knowledge about Revere’s ride is even more unlikely, especially in context of her meandering statements about Revere’s “ringin’ those bells.”

It’s “unlikely”?  One wonders why Burcum is slaving away as an editorial writer when a career as a mind-reader awaits.

The Massachusetts Historical Society was asked about the matter on Monday. In a statement, it said Revere’s mission was to warn the revolutionary forces: “The Society holds three accounts written by Paul Revere. Based on these accounts, Revere was sent out to warn colonists that troops were marching west.”

Gauging by the excited people around Palin in her video — none of whom went “huh?” at the Revere reversal — she’s lost none of her star power. That should concern the Minnesota Republicans who also harbor presidential ambitions.

But gauging by the excited people around her — none of whom went “huh?” at the Revere reversal — she’s lost none of her star power. That should concern the Minnesota Republicans who also harbor presidential ambitions.

Bachmann – unfairly derided as Palin-lite — is expected to declare her presidential candidacy soon. Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty has already announced his bid.

A quote that didn’t make the Palin video makes her gaffe even more head-scratching and hilarious.

Somewhere during the course of her Boston visit, she uttered this phrase, according to the Boston Globe: “You’ve got to know a lot about our past in order to know how to proceed successfully into the future.’’

Words to live by.

Oh, yeah – according to historians, Burcum and Black and “Think” “Progress” are wrong, and Palin was, well, closer to right than any of then would credit her for being:

Palin prompted howls of partisan derision when she said on Boston’s Freedom Trail that Revere “warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.”

Palin insisted yesterday on Fox News Sunday she was right: “Part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there. That, hey, you’re not going to succeed. You’re not going to take American arms.”

In fact, Revere’s own account of the ride in a 1798 letter seems to back up Palin’s claim. Revere describes how after his capture by British officers, he warned them “there would be five hundred Americans there in a short time for I had alarmed the Country all the way up.”

Boston University history professor Brendan McConville said, “Basically when Paul Revere was stopped by the British, he did say to them, ‘Look, there is a mobilization going on that you’ll be confronting,’ and the British are aware as they’re marching down the countryside, they hear church bells ringing — she was right about that — and warning shots being fired. That’s accurate.”

Patrick Leehey of the Paul Revere House said Revere was probably bluffing his British captors, but reluctantly conceded that it could be construed as Revere warning the British.

You should read the whole thing.

And remember – a conservative is smarter after a concussion than a liberal who’s just graduated from Princeton when the subject is history, as anything; if you read it in the leftymedia, distrust but verify and, almost inevitably, distrust even more.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, June 9th, 2011 at 11:00 am and is filed under Campaign '12, Media Bias. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.