Glad for the chance to get a word in before the probable lock.
I do wish I'd posted yesterday, but didn't see the thread. Ah, well.
For years, I've made the Fall of the Alamo a kind of personal holiday, often telling whomever I happened to talk to (if anyone) what day it is. Usually I just get strange looks, but what the hell. Weird part is, I'm not even from Texas.
I love the mythology though. I grew up on the story, starting with the old Disney movie about Davey Crockett, and then the John Wayne movie, and even the Michener book (well, book tape; I can't seem to get into the Michener books). It inspired me to actually look into the history, and made me the one kid at school reading history books voluntarily during recess in elementary school. Yes, I was that kid. Yes, I was as maladjusted as it probably sounds.
The "revisionist history" that seems popular these days really tries to rob the story of its mythic proportion. Smug historians love few things better than sitting in front of a History Channel TV crew and explaining why your heroes weren't really heroes, but merely flawed and mortal men, and why that myth you cherish was really just some guys doing this thing for personal, petty, ignoble reasons. And modern movie directors love few things more than taking a historical event and giving it a "twist", which really means a thick layer of BS and hollywoodization, or "showing the characters' humanity", which tends to mean showing their flaws, real or suspected, in the sharpest possible relief.
So?
We know what they did.
We know what it meant.
We are not children, to think that because a man is human, and flawed, he cannot be a hero.
We are not absolutists, to think that the importance of a thing is diminished because it was done with less than the purest of intent, or for reasons more complex than they may appear.
We are not so naive as to think that, around any great event, there are not tall tales told, or legends that grow in the telling, or that such exaggerations negate the impact.
The story lives on.
Remember the Alamo!