Posted on 10/30/2010 12:05:56 PM PDT by Justaham
Television comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert drew tens of thousands of people to the National Mall on Saturday, promising to skewer partisan politics three days before contentious U.S. elections.
The Comedy Central hosts' "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" started off as part slapstick comedy show and part outdoor festival concert.
Stewart opened the festivities by declaring that "10 million" people showed up, representing all ethnic groups in America.
"It is a perfect demographic sampling of the American people," said Stewart, who hosted U.S. President Barack Obama on his show on Wednesday.
"As you know, if you have too many white people at your rally, then your cause is racist, but if you have too many people of color at your rally, then you must be asking for something: special rights -- like eating in restaurants or piggy back rides -- something that we as a society are not ready to give," he added.
The rally, widely viewed as a response to "August's "Restoring Honor" rally organized by conservative talk show host Glenn Beck, blurred the lines between satire and political activism.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Nice of you to join us today, clay. Actually, I was at the Beck rally in August, and the crowd did go to the Washington Monument. And, it swept well under the trees on the Independence Avenue side of the Mall. So that really isn’t an exaggeration. How trustworthy your report is remains to be seen.
...thousands of total losers.
Judging by the landmarks both crowds appear to extend for about 2200 feet along the line of sight. Of course the width and density are harder to judge.
Why is the resolution always so low in these crowd shots? They're like UFO photos, or something.
Msnbc’s website says it appears to have rivaled Glenn Beck’s rally in numbers. How many ways they find to lie.
The 9-12 event was pretty big, with crowd estimates at the time running from 60,000 to 2 million plus. Those didn't include concurrent tea party events all over the country. The most beautiful Saturday I have ever experienced.
40k Astroturfers bussed in by HuffPo and the SEIU
MSM predictably inflated the numbers.
Is anyone surprised?
They’ll be in denial Wednesday AM as well...
BTW, has CBS called Ohio for Bush yet?
It was America the Beautiful and only a couple of lines of the song. Very, very brief. I don't believe he got to the "God shed his grace on thee..." part.
We need to send these photos to every news outlet over and over and over.
Liberals cheat.
Leave it there till Tuesday when the rest of the trash gets tossed.
You do know that the rallies were in two different locations, right?
Of course. The view from the Washington Monument would be to the east for the Stewart rally and to the west for the Beck rally, and the base line of the two views, as presented, are about 3400 and 1400 feet from the foot of the Washington Monument, respectively.
With the Google Earth "3D building" feature, you can actually position your POV right at the peak of the WM. However, the view is very wide angle and its hard to identify the landmark buildings from there. To get views that look like the photos you have to slide forward along the line of sight.
Oh, Okay. I misunderstood and thought you didn’t know.
So what you are saying is that there was 200,000 at the Stewart rally? Because there are pictures of yesterday’s rally, but they are all cropped.
I’m saying that the ovals on the ground plan at the bottom of the photos are misleading. It shows the Stewart crowd making a much smaller footprint than the Beck crowd, but the Stewart oval is drawn too small to be consistent with the boundaries in the photo. By the appearances of the photos, the crowds had similar footprints, but it’s hard to go from there to an estimate of the numbers.
What this clearly demonstrates to me is that photographic fakery has become quite easy in the Age of Photoshop and that many people believe what they want to believe without actually giving the matter much thought. Take a close look at the far right (no pun intended) edge of the “Stewart” photo posted here. Pay particular attention to the building that looks like it has four “bar” section and then a round section in the corner. The back of the crowd (oddly in a perfect straight line across) ends at just about the spot between the closest “bar” and the round section of the building.
Now take a look at the smaller of the two photos on the CBS site, the one which shows the length of the crowd from above and to the side:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20021284-503544.html
Look for the same building I pointed out in the photo here. Notice that the crowd goes back more than twice as far as is depicted in this obviously faked photo and spills out into the outlying areas.
I’d say that the CBS estimate (the only estimate as far as I know that actually commissioned professionals to do the estimate rather than just guessing) of 215,000 for the Rally to Restore Sanity and 87,000 for Beck’s Restoring Honor rally is probably reasonably accurate. Keep in mind that the Washington Monument is not located in the center of the National Mall. It’s actually much closer to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial than it is to the end of the Mall where the Stewart/Colbert podium is located (which you can clearly see in the aerial map included with the dueling rally photos). And much of the space where the Beck rally was held is taken up by reflecting pools that span most of the length between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. The space in the middle was filled by people, not water, at the Rally to Restore Sanity.
But who cares? What difference does it make? Why is it so important that Beck’s rally be seen as having a bigger crowd than a comedy and music show? Why does everything have to be a peeing contest? Beck’s rally drew more attendees than the liberal One Nation rally (not as many more as is claimed by the right, but more), but the fact is that if you combined both the Restoring Honor and One Nation crowds (wouldn’t that be fun?) it still wouldn’t be as big as Saturday’s rally. And if you combined all three it wouldn’t match the crowd The Beach Boys drew for their 4th of July show in 1980. Perspective, people. Perspective.
This is exactly the sort of thing the underlying theme of the Rally to Restore Sanity was all about — people on both sides (note how Stewart pissed off Keith Olbermann yesterday) being paranoid, hateful, unreasonable and vitriolic rather than trying to think things through in a reasonable and calm manner. Can’t you see that by trying to deny the obvious reality you’re doing the same thing the liberals or progressives or socialists or whatever they’re calling anyone to the left of Genghis Khan these days did when they tried to claim they got a bigger crowd than Beck? Except that the crowd difference between the Beck and One Nation rallies wasn’t quite so obvious and as far as I know they didn’t resort to faked photo comparisons.
And by the way, I know you all think the Rally to Restore Sanity was some big liberal/progressive/socialist/Marxist plot, but there were a lot of Republicans there yesterday. Sure, Stewart and Colbert’s audience skew a bit left of center and the crowd probably reflected that, but these weren’t extremists. In fact, I saw a number of signs calling (in a reasonable manner) for smaller government.
Now, let’s all start proving Jon Stewart right and let the namecalling begin.
The ovals are wrong. (And could give a better idea if they were rectangles.) The Beck rally crowd looks larger, for sure, when you actually look at the photos and how the crowd extents correspond to the map.
Just a note: Libs on other sites are pointing out that the ovals are wrong (they are), and also saying that the two sites’ maps are on different scales (they aren’t, as it is one single photo).
Your graphic isn’t accurate. The rally had space reserved between 4th and 7th street. The stage was just west of 4th Street. The crowd went back to 9th Street. Behind 9th the mall was blocked off for turf restoration with some flimsy little security fence — which no one breached, instead they lined up along side of it.
I went to the rally. I don’t see why the crowd size matters. People came for different reasons. A lot of people at the Sanity rally just came for the entertainment. I never criticized Beck’s rally because I felt it was meant to bring forth a positive message. Same with the Sanity rally.
CBS isn’t an accurate source as they are proven liars (Forged Bush TANG docs)
And the aerial firm they used to estimate the crowd are tied into lefty politics.
Most credible estimates of the Beck rally are around 350k
The Silly rally yesterday was about 1/3rd of that, even with all the HuffPo busses/Astroturf.
Did anyone think the media would NOT overestimate the Silly rally numbers while playing down the Beck rally numbers?
Predictable as the sunrise...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.