#pour one out (not in the harbor) for the interpreters at rev war sites here who are going to have to deal with people drunk on revisionist

[marzipanandminutiae]

oh god there's a Fox News docudrama about the Boston Tea Party out now

I just watched a clip wherein a small bunch of Rough Rugged Patriots with modern American accents (an interesting choice in contrast to the probably more accurate and more common route of giving the English and the colonists similar accents), in shirtsleeves (it was December and also the Little Ice Age and also BOSTON), somberly sneak aboard the ships (there were about 100 men involved and some participant accounts say they were joking with each other while they worked) and threaten violence upon a captain (none of the captains made any move to stop the tea's destruction, that I'm aware of, only expressing concern for the other cargo placed around it. which was later offloaded and sold in Boston without incident) and find the crates of tea "on the deck marked as Madeira wine" (it was not disguised as anything and also, again, it was in the holds surrounded by other cargo)

meanwhile, Samuel Adams "distracts" the...military, I guess, is the implication? at a small meeting in a tiny room (it was an absolutely massive meeting at the Old South Meeting House, then the second-largest indoor space in Boston, and he may have actively tried to stop the group of future tea-dumpers from leaving when they did because the meeting wasn't yet over. plus his role in planning the protest at all is disputed)

also Admiral Montagu of the British navy watched the whole thing happened and didn't stop it. plus a massive crowd of Bostonians on the wharf. so it would be pretty ineffectual "distraction" if good ol' Sam HAD been doing that. which, again, he was not

but I guess that doesn't make as good a story for the M4GA crowd (censoring to avoid the tag)