Revere, further redux

I’m still annoyed at the Sarah Palin error over Paul Revere’s ride. The thing is, for a public figure, there are mistakes, there are stupid mistakes, and there are pernicious mistakes. A mistake is “Sorry, I said 80 billion dollars but I meant 90 billion” or “I said Senator Goldbrick when I meant to refer to Senator Goldberg.” A stupid mistake is either one where you really, really ought to know those facts better, like when Dan Quayle not only misspelled “potato” but was smarmy about it or when George H.W. Bush, a WWII veteran, referred to September 7 as Pearl Harbor Day; or else a case when you did something that a person in the public eye should no better than to do, like Gary Hart’s challenging the press to follow follow him around when he actually was sneaking off to illicit assignations, or like sending a Twitter friend a picture of your crotch when you are not only a plitician but also a newlywed.

Then there are the pernicious mistakes, where you actively cause harm. An example of that would be taking a hero of your country’s revolution, who embarked on a highly dangerous, carefully planned, and actually effective mission and instead making it sound like he just did some trash-talking on an issue that wasn’t even important until a couple hundred years later.

1. Paul Revere’s ride was damned dangerous for two reasons: the British and the dark. The British regular army was a force to be reckoned with; Americans won that war only because they were fighting on two fronts at once, the other (with France) being of more domestic importance and because they weren’t really configured for the sort of guerilla war that much of the Revolution was. The dark was ….. very dark. April 18 was just past the full moon, as it happened, but still there were shadows and ditches and hazards, so that riding at speed in the dark was never a safe pursuit. Further, he was a man of substance, a man with a busienss and a lot to lose if caught. (I think it would have counted as treason, a hanging offense.)

2. He wasn’t randomly riding around shouting “The British are coming!”” The British actually were coming after all, and making a spectacle of oneself would have resulted in being caught by the troops or their sympathizers. He had to tell the right people, ones who were prepared to ride out and alert still more riders. That speaks of long and careful preparation, to know who was safe to talk to and who could be of help.

3. He didn’t say anything to the British Regulars, but least of all “You can’t take our arms!” They weren’t try to take the colonists’ weapons; those were needed for hunting and daily survival. What they wanted were the colonists’ taxes. It is not the same thing. Besides, “You can’t take my arms!” is a stupid thing to say; either they can and do, or they can’t because you’re willing to use said arms. Talking about it is empty posturing.

Cheapening the heroism of our founding legends just seems like an odd and counterproductive thing to do – if anything, I’d think Palin would want to elevate the bravery of someone who was there at the original Tea Party.

I don’t seem to have much else to say just now; the things in my brain are either stuff I’ve written about elsewhere, like on Facebook or Ravelry (my new nibling will be a nephew! I refuse to celebrate one gender over another but I am happy to be able to think about him with his own name, and that they saw him and he’s doing well in there) or boring stuff (I have to go to a work BBQ today and I’m probably going to be sorry I didn’t bring a jacket) or someone else’s drama (a young woman of my online acquaintance fleeing an abusive situation, my worry over her lack of resources, and the balance between trusting a victim’s word and knowing only one side of a story). Also, I seem to be not quite fully functional; I’m sleeping a lot and very hard, my body is tired a lot, and I’m having to really pay attention to finish my current book on the Little Ice Age and not go galumphing off to some nice undemanding Angela Brazil. It’s just easier to write about Paul Revere.