In the comments to my post about the inaccurate reaction to Sarah Palin’s comments about Paul Revere, Taylor Marsh posted the following:
This post is representative of what’s wrong with our politics on both sides of the aisle.
The lengths some people will go to in order to offer cover to politicians, whether it’s Palin or Obama, who actually deserve the ridicule they’re receiving at the moment.
Pointing out that a statement which has been widely portrayed as inaccurate may actually be accurate is “offer[ing] cover”? I don’t think so.
It’s what bloggers should be doing.
What are we, potted plants?
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Amen! Thanks for the linkage yesterday by the way! 🙂
Dear Mr. Fernwell, I mean Jacobson,
I agree with your assessment of the accuracy of Palin's Paul Revere comment. If you have ever read in depth about Paul Revere's ride, you already knew this. People are confusing a Longfellow poem that is largely romanticized fiction for the actual historical record. Revere didn't "tip off" the British, he was issuing a boastful threat in the face of death that the colonials are ready and will cause them great harm…. which they did. These soldiers limped back to Boston days later after suffering numerous casualties and failing at their mission. It's a great story and it is historical record.
Best regards,
p.s. legalize pot(ted) plants
Mr. Marsh seems to favor the short version from the site he links at his blog.
"Soon after, all three were arrested by a British patrol. Prescott escaped almost immediately, and Dawes soon after. Revere was held for some time and then released. Left without a horse, Revere returned to Lexington in time to witness part of the battle on the Lexington Green."
Not the quote from the original letter by Revere which you and C4Palin use which is to be found on another page at the site which Mr. Marsh copied his short version. See page 4 at this link.
http://www.masshist.org/database/img-viewer.php?item_id=99&img;_step=1&tpc;=&pid;=&mode;=transcript&tpc;=&pid;=#page1
Ms. Marsh will thank you not to dwell on facts that conflict with her prejudices.
The first paragraph of an article from 2008 that most LI visitors probably have read:
It's difficult not to froth when one reads, as I did again and again this week, doubts about Sarah Palin's “intelligence,” coming especially from women such as PBS's Bonnie Erbe, who, as near as I recall, has not herself heretofore been burdened with the Susan Sontag of Journalism moniker. As Fred Barnes—God help me, I'm agreeing with Fred Barnes—suggests in the Weekly Standard, these high toned and authoritative dismissals come from people who have never met or spoken with Sarah Palin. Those who know her, love her or hate her, offer no such criticism. They know what I know, and I learned it from spending just a little time traveling on the cramped campaign plane this week: Sarah Palin is very smart.
Palin said that a goal of her tour was to educate people about the America's past and this contretemps about the midnight ride of Paul Revere proves that even supposedly intelligent Americans have a lot to learn about American history. Yes, the fact that Revere was stopped and interrogated is obscure, but shouldn't one or two of the bloggers and reporters who jumped on this story have done a quick google search? In trying to portray Palin as stupid, they instead highlighted their own ignorance. Rather than admitting that they made a mistake and that Palin was correct on the central issue of Revere informing the Brits, they are now trying to spin themselves out of the nasty place they find themselves.
Having read David Hackett Fischer's book on Paul Revere back in 2008, I wasn't snickering or rolling my eyes at Palin's unscripted comments. She could have phrased it better but then again, she wasn't reading comments off an index card or teleprompter.
Indeed, it is types like Mr. Marsh that believe we should remain 'potted' while the MSM makes complete asses of themselves. While there may be a sliver of a point there, pointing out inaccuracies is hardly 'providing cover', on the contrary, it exposes the lack of homework done by those that provide the messages/ bear some responsibility for what gets disseminated across the fruited plain.
Remember the example of a common experiment many of us were exposed to during our young life/schooldays; our teacher would whisper a thought or phrase to a student in the first row/first seat. Then, the thought would be passed around via a whisper from student to student until it reached the back row. Without exception, what resulted would be quite different from the original thought started by the teacher.
Welcome to our modern mainstream media echo chamber.
I find this blog and Professor Jacobson's posts interesting, well researched and well reasoned. He is an excellent blogger.
There is nothing funnier to me than the ignorant psuedo intellectual who considers himself "in the know" and is too lazy or too arrogant to look something up.
There are still no doubt legions of Sarah Palin haters too ignorant to realize they are the fool in this scenario, not Mrs. Palin. More often than not, hubris and arrogance get you laughed at – not laughed with.
I love that quote "I'm not a potted plant, I'm here as the lawyer. That's my job." What a great response when someone is trying to shut you up.
Taylor Marsh is another blogger I used to subscribe to. I read her quite regularly… up until the time at which she allowed her Palin hatred to engulf her common sense.
Sad what has happened to that woman.
wow, she must really be hurting for viewers. i don't think i've ever seen her commenting and posting links to her blog before.
funny she wrote that after all of her pro-obama blogging.
First of all, reporting the facts (Paul Revere did indeed tell the Brits about the colonists waiting for them) is hardly "offerring cover".
Second, when Marsh says this is "what's wrong with our politics on both sides of the aisle" he really just means YOUR side, not his.
You know what's saddest about this? I already identify Professor as the most calm and reasonable Conservative blogger out there.
I'm a Conservative jerk on some other sites, but here that would be like farting in church: you can do it, but all it proves is that you're immature.
To treat Professor as some guy whose soul is to stir us all like crazy and make us freak out, and not as a humorous professor teaching us to be better in all our political actions is just… sad.
Bill,
I would take her appearance here as a good sign. Obviously, something about your post irritated Taylor Marsh — some portion of which, I have little doubt, was the attention it was drawing.
There were a lot of comments on that post. Several very shrill folks had flocked here in a bit of a panic, apparently hoping to somehow parse Palin's point back into the narrative they thought they had so gleefully launched.
How dare you mock them by pointing out that Palin had, intentionally or not, lured them right into a trap and yanked the ignition wire, just as their attack engine was about to roar into life! Palin left them sputtering in rage — again! So many of them flocked here literally on a rescue mission for their narrative, and it wasn't taking. Heh.
Over the years, experience has taught me that nothing that will drive a leftie nuts faster than pointing out an embarrassing gap in their cultural knowledge base! Nothing!
Lets be charitable. Taylor's attack was aimed primarily at you, rather than directly at Palin. She knew she could not take on Palin on the substance of her comment with out getting down in the weeds — and losing. Instead, she thought she would be on safer ground by sniffing at you for defending Palin. And she even sought to make it "bipartisan" by theoretically including lefties who might do the same for one of theirs. The gist of her comment seemed to be, tut tut, that you shouldn't be an apologist for a politician, just because she "technically" happened to be right, for crying out loud!
But it has been okay with Taylor Marsh in the past to unrelentingly attack Sarah Palin, even to the point of employing a sexist term to describe her. Last cycle, Marsh was a huge supporter of Hillary Clinton, one of the last hold-outs, as a matter of fact. As such, she was not really trusted by the "progral" Obama base, at least until she began uncritically singing soaring praises to his name. Oh wait . . .
And then, she unloaded on John McCain and Palin, the former for merely having selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. Consider this contempt-dripping cheap shot by Taylor Marsh:
* * * * *
"Does McCain think women are stupid? Evidently, yes. They believe that just because Sarah Palin is a woman, disaffected HRC voters and women are supposed to flock to her. Experience, for Republicans has got nothing to do with it, especially if you’re a chick."
(her emphasis in the original)
* * * * *
Oooooh . . . how daring of her to employ the bad word as a put-down for Sarah!
So, no one should take the substance of Taylor Marsh's comment seriously at all. Who is she kidding?
It's the fact that she somehow felt compelled to put in an appearance here that is interesting. Who knows . . . maybe they're all sick of listening to one another blather over there in leftie land, and she thought she'd go trollin' over here.
Trochilus, that last quote from Taylor is curious. If you were to line up the executive experience of each of the candidates in the last election, well, you had three senators against a border-state governor…
Or are we supposed to believe that Hillary's time as First Lady counts as executive experience?
@Rob Crawford June 5, 2011 1:34 PM |
Heh.
Perhaps there just is no readily discernible accounting for the facts, or lack thereof, underscoring Taylor Marsh's rhetorical flourishes.
Certainly I'm not going to volunteer to be her defender in that regard . . . well, except to say that Hillary apparently did garner some executive experience in overseeing the White House travel office.
Oh wait . . . maybe that was a false start . . . complete with false statements from Hillary herself. My bad!
But, there was "HillaryCare", no? That was executive experience! Not a particularly successful one for her, or for the country, I guess. But it was executive experience.