In Concord, New Hampshire, on March 11 and 12, 2011, apparently testing to see whether that little state has bad enough education standards before announcing a presidential bid, Michelle Bachmann butchered history and geography once again, according to the conservative Minnesota Independent:
“You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord,” she said, referencing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn,” an ode to the lives lost at the start of the American Revolution in Concord, Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.
How many bites at the apple does stupid get? Has Ed Brayton picked up on this yet?
Minnesota U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann
More:
- “Concord Hymn” read by Bill Clinton
- “Paul Revere’s Ride” 150 years old during National Poetry Month (2010)
- “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World”
- Celebrating April 19: Paul Revere and the shot heard ’round the world
- Remember why it is important to watchdog Tea Partiers as they savage U.S. history, from this article by Erik Christiansen and Jeremy Sullivan in Inside Higher Ed
Tip of the old scrub brush to Pat Carrithers.
Update: Oh, yeah, others noticed:
- New American did its damnedest to explain it away as a slip of the tongue — either assuming Bachmann is too reckless not to use prepared remarks for her first foray into New Hampshire (maybe a more serious indictment), or not paying attention to her written remarks (Was it just one more in a long string of really stupid slips of the tongue? Loose tongues sink as many ships as loose lips . . .); in another article New American falsely claimed a worldwide ban on DDT, falsely claiming the ban killed 30 million kids, and said that it disrupted food growing in America, though food crops hadn’t been sprayed with DDT for nearly a decade when its use was banned on agricultural crops in the U.S. alone. Accuracy isn’t in that animal
- And that site for undiscriminating, miseducated people, American Elephants, thought Bachmann’s earlier distortions of history just lovely.
- Peter Fenn blogging at U.S. News and World Report asks, “Why does anyone take Michelle Bachmann seriously?”
- Politico notes the long history of Bachmann getting the facts wrong, and reveals that Bachmann repeated the error about the location of the Battle of Concord at least twice in that New Hampshire swing. Bachmann can’t hire competent aides, either? Politico questions Bachmann’s basic governing competence, noting that, while she is a member of the House Intelligence Committee and should know better, she urged President Obama to follow the counsel of Gen. David Patraeus about intervention in Libya. Petraeus isn’t in the chain of command on Libya since he took over the job in Afghanistan several months ago.
- The Concord (New Hampshire) Monitor took a hands-off approach, using the Associated Press story on the gaffe
- Cartoonist Jeff Danziger, one of America’s best, puts the event into pithy perspective (see below)
- Mike the Mad Biologist, who uses one of the greatest images for free speech as his avatar, lists Bachmann as “dumber than a sack of hammers”
- Even Little Green Footballs appears to take after Bachmann, but with an account that is, after all, just the facts
Jeff Danziger
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 