Wikipedia locked its “Paul Revere” page because Sarah Palin’s fans are aggressively wrong

Sarah Palin has been taking some heat this week, after offering up a colourful but wildly incorrect take on the Paul Revere story.

“He who warned, uh, the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed,” Palin said.

Later, when Fox News host and Palin co-worker Chris Wallace challenged her account – asking “You realized you messed up about Paul Revere?” – she insisted that no, she hadn’t.

“”Here is what Paul Revere did,” she explained. “He warned the Americans that the British were coming, the British were coming and they were going to try to take our arms and we have to make sure we were protecting ourselves and shoring up all of our ammunitions and our firearms so they couldn’t take it.”

Now, that’s not correct. According to the Paul Revere House in Boston, “Paul Revere was sent for by Dr. Joseph Warren and instructed to ride to Lexington, Massachusetts, to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were marching to arrest them.”

He wasn’t trying to warn the British of anything. He certainly wasn’t trying to warn them that they’d better not try and take away America’s guns.

But because she’s Sarah Palin, she won’t admit that she was wrong. And because her fans and followers are dedicated to the point of bullheaded, they keep insisting she’s right. As a result, according to the Atlantic, the good people at Wikipedia have had to lock their entry on Paul Revere in order to shut down the surge of people who have tried to change the page and make it more in keeping with Palin’s incorrect account.

Isn’t this why Conservapedia was invented? Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t that the deal? Didn’t we agree to give these right-wing revisionist morons their own little corner of the web, where they could mangle the truth to their heart’s content, as long as they left the rest of us alone?

I mean, you don’t see me going over there and writing “dude had a gay husband” all over the Ronald Reagan entry. Stay on your side of the fence, you sneaky revisionists!

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