'Daily Show' gives Palin historical Twitter hashtag

Sometimes, one's congeniality can get one into trouble. So much so, that those with wicked intentions attach a Twitter hashtag to your persona--one that turns you into, well, a target of sorts.

In case you have been recently incarcerated for actions against the state (or otherwise out of touch with current events), you might not know that Sarah Palin visited Boston yesterday and shone something of a fading bulb on American history.

She seemed to be believe Paul Revere's midnight ride involved bell-ringing and gun-shooting, rather than lantern-displaying, and that the Revolutionary War hero's intent was to warn the British that "we were gonna be secure...free...and armed." (Details of the inventive historic account are here.)

Online retribution has been swifter than Paul Revere's reindeer.

The staff at "The Daily Show," unable to wait until Monday in order to allow a shot or two to ring out, leaped headlong onto Twitter and created a hashtag, #AccordingtoPalin, which quickly went viral.

There, they invited people from all over America--and even those infidels to the west of Alaska--to offer their own, humorous renditions of Palinesque history.

Some will feel that this is petty, personal, distracting, and deeply unfunny.

However, others might find it within their historical grasp to be amused by the meme, which includes contributions such as this one from the staff of "The Daily Show": "The moon landing of Lance Armstrong shows what ordinary Americans can do when government just gets out of our way."

"The Daily Show" also tweeted: "As George Washington said, 'No government health care, thanks, I'll make my own teeth from small-town American wood!'"

Film critic Roger Ebert joined the festivities: "New Hampshire is where the famous poet Robert Frost wrote about the famous snowman Frosty."

Soon, people were leaving "#AccordingtoPalin" tweets such as: "The Bay of Pigs invasion secured our access to necessary and tasty pork products" and "The Manhattan Project was Donald Trump's first foray into real estate."

Mistakes can be (and are) made by everyone. And though Palin has been a very active user of Facebook and Twitter in order to disseminate her controlled message, it seems that Twitter's immediacy is being used to expose--and revel in--her rather halting knowledge of, well, things.

Should she choose to get on her horse and ride into an election, Palin will, perhaps, decry all those who criticize her as communist elitists. Yet where once a mudslide of the tongue might well have been forgotten, somehow the existence of the Web (and sites like Twitter) allows what might have been a casual mistake to grow into something much more lasting.