Lyin' Lenny Strikes Again

In the June 9 issue of the Lawrence Journal-World, columnist Leonard Pitts writes the following:

"[Sarah Palin] makes mistakes like Apple makes iPhones, so there is a temptation to catalogue her recent bizarre claim that Paul Revere’s midnight ride in April 1775 was to “warn the British.” (He actually rode to alert patriots Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were coming to arrest them) as superfluous evidence of intellectual mediocrity. The instinct is to think her historical illiteracy speaks ill only of her."

However, in a June 6 Boston Herald article with the headline "Experts back Sarah Palin’s historical account," several historians point out that Palin had her history right.

According to Boston University history professor Brendan McConville, “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.”

Cornell law professor William Jacobson said Palin’s critics are the ones in need of a history lesson. “It seems to be a historical fact that this happened,” he said. “A lot of the criticism is unfair and made by people who are themselves ignorant of history.”

Pitts appears to be both ignorant of history and dishonest.