Sunday, October 3, 2010

Enthusiasm Gap at 'One Nation' Rally? You Think?

You know, I've been to so many small tea parties that I don't care too much about the size of events after a while. The feeling at the massive rallies is just exponentially different. I covered the Phoenix amnesty and reconquista march, which easily saw 50,000 people make the trek from the starting Indian School location to the civic center. But whenever tea partiers march there's a systematic press effort to suppress the numbers. What's so funny about the socialist rally yesteday is that there's nothing the media could do to help the measly turnout for the radical leftists. Perhaps 10 or 15 thousand showed up all day, but it's pretty odd for speakers to still be yelping to the crowd when the mall is virtually empty (at the video). That said, Nicole Belle --- obviously of the reality-based community, right? --- is undeterred: "Here's Your Enthusiasm Gap: One Nation Rally Draws More Attendees Than Beck's 'Whitestock'." (Via Memeorandum.)

Even during what would appear to be at the period of peak attendance it's just not that crowded. Check this CNN video at about 30 seconds. Pay attention to the grassy area on the left, next to the reflecting pool. It's just wide patches of grass. And then check my post from yesterday.

Roughly the same shot can be seen at this C-SPAN screencap:

One Nation Crowd

And Andrew Berman states the main problem: "I still have not found a good overhead shot yet ..." Exactly. William Teach predicted that we wouldn't see any overhead shots, and we won't, unless a tea partier cruised up to the top of the Washington Monument to snap a picture. If one become available it would go viral big time. See a report from both Glenn Beck's and "One Nation" at Just a Conservative Girl, "8/28 Crowd V. 10/2 Crowd See for yourself." And at Lonely Conservative, "Rally for Socialism Fails to Draw Much of a Crowd." Plus, at RWN, "Lefty Rally at Lincoln Memorial Gets Glad Handed By Old Media, But Event a Bust." And Nice Deb has the most comprehensive roundup of the day, "One Nation of Moonbats March on Washington."

3 comments:

Rich Casebolt said...

One of the comments at This Ain't Hell included this link.

There's your viral shot.

aldo said...

What I think is funny is that they also say that numbers don't matter.

Um, last I checked, numbers DO matter, because numbers get people into office!

dogzilla said...

The Blaze says Huffington has a shot from the Washington Monument: http://tinyurl.com/2fgffq8

Good photo comparisons if the HuffPo photo is authentic.

Those of us who attended 8/28 didn't get free transport, free lunch, or a T-shirt. We didn't get paid to attend. So that seems worth noting, IMHO. We went because we felt the need to. Also there's the litter comparisons, but that was almost expected: people who demand entitlements expect someone else to clean up their mess, too, evidently.