Factcheck.org Partially Defends Sarah Palin on Paul Revere Story

Here's the lede from Brooks Jackson, director of Factcheck.org, on the Palin / Paul Revere story:

Sarah Palin's much-ridiculed story of Paul Revere isn't entirely wrong, but it's badly twisted.

Huh?

Had someone been claiming that every word Palin said had zero relation to the actual history? I haven't seen it. I'm seeing a straw man. I'm seeing a Factcheck.org setup that's desperately trying to find some middle ground, when there's not really much middle ground at all in the Palin / Paul Revere thing.

The point is not, and has never been, whether every single word Palin said was incorrect, or just most of them. That's an absurd standard. Heck, she got Paul Revere's name right, for example. By Factcheck's setup here, that ought to give her points! Perhaps the critics have gone too far by not giving her credit for that!

The Factcheck piece, after the lede, mostly lays out things fairly clearly. But in trying to come up with something Palin did right, Jackson again stumbles:

It's also true that Revere spoke to British officers — though that was by no means his intent. He was seized by a British patrol before he got to Concord. Revere, under questioning, told British officers that 500 Americans were coming to confront them.

I mean, really. Palin's words had been that Revere "warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells and making sure as he was 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."

Somehow Jackson manages to gives Palin an "it's also true" for a part of this. Feels like a desperate stretch.