Posted on 08/30/2010 2:09:21 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Glenn Beck rally attendance has become hotly contested following Saturday's event in Washington. But from Woodstock to the Million Man March, figuring out the number of people who show up at big events has never been easy.
Can we really get an accurate count of the number of people who attended Saturday's Glenn Beck “Restoring Honor” rally? The answer might be, “No, we can’t.”
Crowd-counting science is far from exact. Much of it is based on examination of overhead photos to calculate crowd density and related statistics. It reminds us of the old intelligence agency practice of “shedology,” in which the Central Intelligence Agency and others estimated Soviet weapons numbers by looking at overhead photos of military sheds and calculating how many tanks they might hold.
Plus, numbers are inevitably colored by an estimator’s interest. Rally organizers usually say crowds were huge, bigger than expected. Critics will say the numbers were less than anticipated. That’s been the case for years.
That’s led to controversy in the past. In October 1995, the National Park Service estimated that about 400,000 people attended the “Million Man March” organized by the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan. Organizers were so angry they sent lawyers to meet with the Park Service.
Shortly thereafter, the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing estimated that the crowd had been 837,000, plus or minus 20 percent. What was the difference? The Park Service counted via pictures taken from videotape. The Center for Remote Sensing used original photo negatives.
Photos of the Beck event clearly show a big crowd. The weather was great – whatever the exact figure, there were a lot of people there.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Did you also notice the marksmen (snipers) stationed atop the Lincoln Memorial and the two largest "frames" at the extreme left and right of the podium?
Oh... and the armed escorts/bodyguards?
Good to know... I think....
RE: And they left the place spotless!
SOME POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE THINGS SAID ABOUT THE RALLY:
POSITIVE:
Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal attorney and speechwriter, Clarence B. Jones, said he believes King would not have been offended by Beck’s rally but “pleased and honored”.
Jones — now a visiting professor at Stanford University — said the Beck rally seemed to be tasteful and did not appear to distort King’s message.
James Freeman, in an op-ed for the The Wall Street Journal, wrote positively about the rally, remarking that “the day was largely devoted to expressions of gratitude for the sacrifices of U.S. soldiers, for great men of American history like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and for God.”
After noting how the crowd refused to boo during the closing prayer upon the mention of President Obama, Freeman theorized that “between Saturday’s crowd in Washington and the tea partiers agitating for limited government, we may be witnessing the rebuilding of the Reagan coalition, the fusion of religious and economic conservatives.”
(SEE HERE : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703369704575461633570826898.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)
On the NEGATIVE SIDE,
Bill Press, who attended the rally personally, criticized the “Christian religious fervor” of the event, remarking that at one point he expected Beck “to part the Reflecting Pool and walk across it.”
(SEE HERE : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-press/glenn-becks-big-bust-on-t_b_698654.html?view=print)
In discussing the setting among the crowd, Press stated that it was “a strange combination of political rally and religious revival”, which left him surrounded by the “old, white, and angry.”
Eric Deggans, media critic for the St. Petersburg Times, hypothesized that with the rally, Beck had created a blueprint for “ultra-conservative” Tea Party activists to “look more mainstream to independent voters” before the November 2010 midterm elections.
(SEE HERE :http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-deggans/the-genius-of-glenn-beck_b_699147.html?view=print)
I did not notice either of these two security items, but I am glad that they were in place.
The numbers matter.
Imagine if only 3 people had shown?
What 3 million had shown?
Obviously the political implecations would be very different.
The WMATA (DC Metro) today gave a count for Metro ridership on Saturday .. noting that it included riders for the Beck and Sharpton rallies, and the Nationals game that night. They said the ridership didn’t rank among the top 10 Metro events in its 30+ year history. It would be interesting to now what the top 10 events were.
On the other hand, Sharpton let slip with O’Reilly that “we knew how many we were going to have because we knew how many buses WE hired” or something awfully close to that.
I’d like to see the Metro usage at the Metro station near Dunbar High School, where Sharpton’s event was held; it is highly unlikely any of the Beck people rode to or from that station. That would eliminate a couple hundred from the Metro rolls. Similarly, they could eliminate the traffic at the station nearest to the Nationals stadium, as that is also nowhere near where Bec,’s rally was held, or where out of towners would have been riding to get to the rally.
When we left the rally, on the earlier side, there was a line a couple blocks long of riders trying to get on at the Smithsonian station. We skipped out, and walked a few blocks to another station that also eliminated our having to transfer. But the crowd at the Smithsonian was totally civil despite having to stand in line in the head and direct sunlight.
But, it wasn’t supposed to be a political rally.
Even though it wasn’t a political rally, it has political implications.
Thanks for the image. That was done by Linda Eddy. She is great!
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