Sarah Palin explains that Paul Revere's purpose was to warn the British about "our well-armed persons individual private militias that we have." She's correcting an earlier statement, and still manages to get it wrong. Palin has a knack for holding our attention, and she parlays her mistake into even more "news." At the same time she's offended we're paying attention. For Palin, every question is a "gotcha!" question, and every accurate quote makes her look foolish. No, it's not a conspiracy against you, Sarah, it's just what happens when you blab at every passing camera and you happen to be as dumb as a mud fence.
Palin is the perfect TV creature, a telegenic airhead who must have evolved in a symbiotic relationship with the idiot box, always playing to the camera with a wink and a smirk. While most people's sound bites are merely the tip of the iceberg of a much larger thought, her "thoughts" are a perfect fit, tiny bite-size nuggets aimed for maximum impact. McLuhan would have immediately recognized Palin as the vapid clone of the cool medium: as deep as a flat-screen, as trashy as trash TV, and as dumb as a commercial whose idiot jingles stick in our collective consciousness time and again.
You'd think that if she were so worried about seeming stupid she might actually crack a book once in a while and prepare for her little speeches. She's entertaining, but imagine her running the most powerful country on earth with that little "the dog ate my homework" smirk on her face and her ability to blame everyone else for making her look so stupid.
In case you missed it, here is the original gaffe:
Just for the record, Paul Revere didn't ring bells or fire shots. He was riding to warn the rebels that the British were coming -- not to warn the British "that they weren't going to be taking away our arms." But you knew that.
UPDATE: We can't leave well enough alone, so here's Stephen Colbert on Sarah Palin's history lesson about Paul Revere:
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