Chalk One Up For The Brits
Ironic, isn't it?
I typed "tea party protest washington", and just did a Google news search. As of this moment in time, here's what I came up with;
ABC stated there were simply "thousands".*
The New York Times also stated there were simply "thousands".
The Washington Post stated there were "tens of thousands".
Fox News stated there were "tens of thousands".
CNN ran a story, but never gave a number.
As of this posting, CBS, NBC and MSNBC haven't even covered it.
The Daily Mail (London, UK) estimates the crowed as "up to two million". Also, for whatever bizarre reason, the US Park Police have declined to estimate the size of the crowd. Interesting, no?
*In all fairness to ABC, they did post "approximately 60,000 to 70,000 people flooded Pennsylvania Ave, according to the Washington DC Fire Department". Nice sentence, but isn't there a lot more to the area the protesters were (like The Mall, proper) than just Pennsylvania Avenue?"
Ironic, isn't it?
I typed "tea party protest washington", and just did a Google news search. As of this moment in time, here's what I came up with;
The New York Times also stated there were simply "thousands".
The Washington Post stated there were "tens of thousands".
Fox News stated there were "tens of thousands".
CNN ran a story, but never gave a number.
As of this posting, CBS, NBC and MSNBC haven't even covered it.
The Daily Mail (London, UK) estimates the crowed as "up to two million".
*In all fairness to ABC, they did post "approximately 60,000 to 70,000 people flooded Pennsylvania Ave, according to the Washington DC Fire Department". Nice sentence, but isn't there a lot more to the area the protesters were (like The Mall, proper) than just Pennsylvania Avenue?"
posted by Kevin Whiteman at
11:59 AM
9 Comments:
Thanks for this article. My husband and I were just having a conversation about how the media bias, which we all know has always been awful, just seems to keep getting more and more outrageous.
I just discovered your blog the other day and it's great!
Would be cool to see a photo from the Washington Monument.
Dear Cavemen,
(Sorry for the long post-- it got away from me! Please feel free to edit for space.)
I'll be glad to give my own perspective on the numbers, since I was in the middle of them yesterday.
First of all, the Park Service never officially estimates numbers-- they stopped doing it years ago, for some reason. So it's left up to others to make the count. The number of 2 million apparently came from the count by one of the Tea Party organizations, and was then reported by an ABC affiliate as 1.5 to 2 million.
As one of the participants, I do not know if this number is accurate. What I do know is that the multitude overflowed way past what is in the picture above-- if you know the National Mall at all, the crowd apparently went all the way back to 7th street-- which is the street running between the Air and Space Museum and the Hirshhorn. (Another event had the back of the Mall toward the Wash. Monument.) A friend of mine, who was on the sidelines and did not join the march, said that he was standing on Penn. Ave. watching us go by, and it took over 2 hours for the crowd to pass.
I might also mention that the event started at 9 in Freedom Plaza for pre-march pep talks, etc. The DC police had to start the march early because we had reached critical mass by 9:30 AM. As we all moved out down Penn. Ave., you could see the feeder streets ALSO filling with people streaming in to join the march. They just kept coming and coming and coming...
All told, I heard that we had 45 states represented. I personally met Tea Partiers from Michigan, Florida, Arkansas, New York, North Carolina, and Kansas, as well as a few dozen from Virginia (my own home state). One of the speakers said that Congress was "aware of us"-- and followed by saying, "I hope so-- we shut down all the roads!!"
After the event, walking down to a local hotel, I got into a conversation with one of the other eventers. He asked what I thought the participants in the Million Man March would have thought if they'd had as little (and lukewarm--ed) publicity as we'd had, and I said that the MMM'ers probably would have been furious. And my fellow eventer said, "We're not furious, though-- we've come to expect this." Unfortunately true.
Although I guess we can't complain too much: I heard that a crew from CNN finally did come to cover the event, and they were surrounded by outraged protesters who literally shouted and booed so loudly that the crew couldn't film and were forced to close up. I don't know if that's true, but that was the rumor going around yesterday.
Ladies and gentlemen, I could go on and on, but this post has gone on too long already. If anyone would like more details (and there were TONS of amazing things to report-- not the least of which was the fact that we all picked up our trash!!!), please let me know and I'll be glad to provide an after-action report.
"Vodkapundit" on Pajamas Media also has a good estimate of crowd size if anyone is interested.
Oh, and I slept in this morning and didn't make it to church, so please pray for my soul. :)
Best regards,
Erin
Erin, check out Michelle Malkin's site. She has proof that the Park Services re-established that they did in fact start crowd counts again. And it started for Obama's inauguration... why? "A President has a right to know how many people showed up." (Me thinks his ego was already inflated and he wanted it stroked some more).
www.mommylife.net has a HUGE amount of AWESOME pictures from the march.
The MSM makes me sick. they wouldn't know the truth or have the courage to report it if it bit them in their fourth point of contact.
Thank you to all who was able to make it!!!
The Park Service stopped estimating after the Million Man March drew WAY less than a million, and they got flack for "getting it wrong".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Man_March
Cam,
Welcome!
Erin,
I saw the same article by ABC, but then I also read an ABC article stating that they were misquoted by "whoever" at the rally, and that ABC never said such a thing. (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/protest-crowd-size-estimate-falsely-attributed-abc-news/story?id=8558055).
I did like your story about what happened to the CNN crew. Priceless!!!!
It was north of 1 million.
The only people who NEED to know the size of the crowd are the members of the Party-In-Government (there IS only one...) or PIGs for short.
And trust me, they had their little weenie/spies out there. They know it was a large crowd which meant business.
AND there were 20,000 more in Fort Worth, 4,000 last weekend in Sheboygan, WI (!!!) and 10,000 in Joliet, IL last weekend, too.
The bastards know it.
Tristan... go to the Park Services, not wiki...http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-19-crowd_N.htm
So um... yeah.. they did stop it after the MMM, however they did it for this years inauguration.
It is amazing to me that there are no overhead shots from the air. I wonder who had the helicoptors and if any of them have film they are not showing.
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