Should Sarah Palin Just Stop Talking About Paul Revere?

Just a suggestion: if you're going to take a campaign-style swing around the country to patriotic places without announcing a campaign while pissing off the mainstream media by not giving them your schedule or talking to them, make sure you have your history right.

Former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin is learning that lesson the hard way as she tries to step out of the quicksand mess that is her Revere-gate. You might recall that Palin told a local news station in Boston last week that famous rider Revere "warned the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms."

A great quote that happened to get the history of Revere's ride exactly wrong. So paid Fox News contributor Palin defended her latest gaffe on the network on Sunday, explaining that, "I didn't mess up about Paul Revere. Part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there that 'hey, you're not going to take American arms, you are not going to beat our own well-armed persons individual private militia that we have.'"

So who was to blame? Yup, the "lamestream" media for trying to trip her up with their gull darned "gotcha questions" again.

Palin's supporters are clearly on board her historical revision tour, since they tried to update the Wikipedia entry on Revere to make it jibe with her comments. In keeping with Palin's claims, they altered it to read "Revere did not shout the phrase later attributed to him ("The British are coming!"), largely because the mission depended on secrecy and the countryside was filled with British army patrols; also, most colonial residents at the time considered themselves British as they were all legally British subjects." (Italics represent the edited parts."

Wiki quickly deleted the revision, explaining that the "content was not backed by reliable sources."

Should Palin stop talking about Revere?