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**XqrkN4a0** · 08-30-2010, 05:55 PM

Washington Post:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plu...lly_turno.html
While the official Tea Party estimates of Saturday's rally attendance may range between a gajillion and the fafillion, the company CBS hired to give an estimate placed the turnout at a respectably large 87,000, larger than the official estimates of turnout last year's 9/12 rally but no where near the estimated 1.8 million that attended Obama's inauguration.

The number of people who showed up for Beck's rally was also considerably smaller than the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom, at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have A Dream" speech and which Beck self-consciously styled his "restoring honor" event after, to the irritation of many liberals. The 1963 march drew around 200,000 people, according to contemporary estimates. The crowd then was considerably more diverse, had a leftist economic agenda and was organized by admitted socialists who palled around with a number of other lefty types who likely would have ended up on Glenn Beck's chalkboard back in the day. That crowd also was produced without the kind of financial support provided by Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity, and at a time when long-distance communication tools were considerably more limited.

In fact, given the money and technology available to Beck, it feels like there should be a way to adjust for inflation when it comes to historical comparisons of crowd sizes. Imagine what King, the black church and labor movement could have done if they'd had access to the Internet and a television network.

The Million Man March in 1995, the last big event that similarly mixed a sort of vague spirituality with political criticism of the then-Republican majority's congressional agenda, drew around 450,000 people, according to the lowest estimates. Louis Farrakhan's relative obscurity other than as a right-wing bogeyman may also be instructive for liberals looking for some historical perspective. Ten years after positioning himself as the de-facto leader of black America, he was pretty much a non-factor politically.

08-30-2010, 05:55 PM	#17
XqrkN4a0 Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 387 Senior Member	Washington Post: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plu...lly_turno.html While the official Tea Party estimates of Saturday's rally attendance may range between a gajillion and the fafillion, the company CBS hired to give an estimate placed the turnout at a respectably large 87,000, larger than the official estimates of turnout last year's 9/12 rally but no where near the estimated 1.8 million that attended Obama's inauguration. The number of people who showed up for Beck's rally was also considerably smaller than the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom, at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have A Dream" speech and which Beck self-consciously styled his "restoring honor" event after, to the irritation of many liberals. The 1963 march drew around 200,000 people, according to contemporary estimates. The crowd then was considerably more diverse, had a leftist economic agenda and was organized by admitted socialists who palled around with a number of other lefty types who likely would have ended up on Glenn Beck's chalkboard back in the day. That crowd also was produced without the kind of financial support provided by Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity, and at a time when long-distance communication tools were considerably more limited. In fact, given the money and technology available to Beck, it feels like there should be a way to adjust for inflation when it comes to historical comparisons of crowd sizes. Imagine what King, the black church and labor movement could have done if they'd had access to the Internet and a television network. The Million Man March in 1995, the last big event that similarly mixed a sort of vague spirituality with political criticism of the then-Republican majority's congressional agenda, drew around 450,000 people, according to the lowest estimates. Louis Farrakhan's relative obscurity other than as a right-wing bogeyman may also be instructive for liberals looking for some historical perspective. Ten years after positioning himself as the de-facto leader of black America, he was pretty much a non-factor politically.
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