Palin vs. Longfellow
By:
June 6, 2011
Last week, while visiting Boston, Sarah Palin claimed that Paul Revere warned the British they weren’t going to be taking away Americans’ arms by “riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells.” Critics point out that Revere warned the colonists, and did not do so by firing a gun. Palin supporters have responded by trying to “fix” Wikipedia’s Paul Revere page — for example, by noting that the colonists were British; and also that “accounts differ” about how Revere warned the colonists. Palin, too, insists that her version of Paul Revere’s ride was accurate.
Fortuitously, our friend Ben Grenman has discovered a poem about Paul Revere’s ride that was coauthored by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Sarah Palin. Excerpt:
Then Lincoln rang a second bell
There in the skiff, upon the waves.
It stopped the war and freed the slaves
And they all went to the hotel,
Which doubled as a rebel base
And Paul was glad to see Abe’s face
Broad and smiling, like the nation
(This was months before the assassination.)
Then Johnny Tremain, and Mark McGwire,
And lots more men that we admire
Joined up with the delegation.
Beautiful.