Gettysburg & an Idiot

In observance of Memorial Day, Hubs and I watched the much advertised Gettysburg documentary by the History Channel. I don't know what I was expecting, maybe I thought it would be more like the promos with expensive-looking slow-mo reenactments and Kate Bush covers. Hubs summed it up perfectly when he said, well, they did a good job of making the promos look like it wasn't some regular History Channel show.

That's exactly what it was, a regular History Channel show with maybe a little more money to throw around and the Scott bros. names tacked on. I guess I thought there would be more in depth explanation of the strategy. They didn't bring anything new or special to the table. Unless you count the historian who got way too excited about all the damage that the different cannonballs inflicted on the soldiers. The whole thing really made me miss Shelby Foote and want to go out and buy Ken Burns' Civil War.

I'm also curious to see Gettysburg with Jeff Daniels. I sort of watched it in high school. My American History teacher decided to show my class the movie instead of teaching us that chapter. But he had a short attention span and whenever the generals would meet in the tent to strategize he would exclaim, Too much talk! And then fast forward to the battle scenes. Not very educational.

This was the same American History teacher that would leave the room for ten minute stretches and return with bloodshot eyes. The same teacher that played Birth of a Nation and rewound the part where the little sister jumps off a cliff to avoid being raped by a black man over and over and over again. You know, because it was hilarious. And yes, he was right, it kind of was funny the first and second times. The next five times, not so much. The same teacher who realized a week before the A.P. test (yes, this was an A.P. class) that we were still in the 60's, and "covered" the 70's, 80's, and 90's in one week. Yeah, didn't do so well on that test.

In another example of piss poor American history, Sarah Palin made the news this week when she rewrote the journey of Paul Revere and his famous ride through Boston during her am-I-or-aren't-I-running-(of course I am)-bus tour. Fine, who cares, right? She's dumb, really bad at answering softball questions, and too easy to make fun of, so not worth my time. However, it is infuriating how when being interviewed by Fox News, her own mothership, she was asked about the Paul Revere screwup and still claimed that everything she said was accurate. Okay, when you are given the chance to right your wrongs and you stick by your incorrect version of the Paul Revere story as the truth, you only prove one thing, and that is that you are crazy. Cray-cray please pack it up and go home. And home will never be the White House.

So in honor of Paul Revere, and belated Memorial Day, here is Stephen Colbert's reenactment of the revised ride of Paul Revere. Quite funny.