Lindaman weighs in on the One Nation Coming Together rally. First by making what he calls a “sign”, since he still hasn’t quite figured out how to make Demotivational Posters. Then in his next post, he posts this picture and proceeds with:
Remember when Leftist talk show host Ed Schultz claimed he could get 300,000 people at a rally in Washington, DC, with six months of promotion?
Well, back in June of this year, African-American leaders started talking about organizing a rally to counter Glenn Beck's 8/28 rally. Let's see...late June to early October is...right around 3 1/2 months.
You’re going by the first announcement? Glenn Beck first announced his August 28th, 2010 rally on November 21st, 2009!
Howzabout talking about when they actually publicized it? Ed Schultz first talked about the October 2nd, 2010 rally on MSNBC September 3rd, 2010!
One Nation themselves didn't announce it on their site until September 17th, 2010!
Even with unions and the NAACP busing people in for the rally,
Uh… so? Beck bused people, too. He even bragged about it on his Twitter:
There are free buses for practically every rally (some organized by the event planners, most not). Don't be so naive to think that each and every individual in every rally got there under their own power, at their own expense, from locations all across the US. Any planned event of sufficient size and funding has also taken care of a proportional amount of its attendees' transportation needs.
So why are right-wingers acting like the One Nation busing is so sinister? Just kidding, we get it… the NAACP is evil because they advance colored people, and unions are evil because they protect the working class.
Beck's “grassroots” rally wasn't funded by NewsCorp, MetLife, and the Koch brothers?
Leave it to right wingers to imply that Beck specifically forbade anyone from getting there any other way than walking on their hands.
estimates have the 10/2 rally at around 150,000 people.
What estimates? There were no professional crowd estimators. That number is probably too high.
Oh, I'm sure Ed will come out with an excuse that "we didn't have six months to promote it like Glenn Beck did,"
Six months? I thought you were starting the clock at the first announcement?
but the point is still that they had the time to promote it heavily, and they failed. Even with the "star power" of someone like Ed Schultz,
Ed Schultz has “star power”? *snicker*
they couldn't muster much more than half of what Beck's 8/28 rally garnered.
Are you saying Beck’s rally was 300,000? Beck said it was 500,000! Are you calling Glenn Beck a liar?? Why do you hate America??
(And, no, I don't believe the 87,000 number CBS put out because I've been to the Lincoln Memorial twice now. The length of the reflecting pool alone could accommodate that many people as densely populated as it was at the 8/28 rally.)
So in addition to being an expert on global warming, Lindaman is now a professional crowd estimator?
I do like how you just said “CBS put out”. Funny. “Remember Dan Rather? You can’t trust CBS!” Instead of stating there were actual neutral crowd estimators. We’ll get to that in a minute.
But, I guess it bears repeating. There are only two words that fit yesterday's rally in DC: epic fail.
Then Lindaman posts this picture. Hey, he finally did it! It looks like a Demotivational Poster! Oh, wait… that’s a stolen image, not his.
First, just as a joke, let’s pretend the numbers Lindaman states are correct. Let’s live in an alternate reality where Beck’s crowd attendance was 300,000 and One Nation’s rally was 150,000.
The first television announcements to Beck’s rally was at least six months prior, and had tons of media coverage (especially Fox News). The One Nation rally was first announced on MSNBC less than a month prior, and MSNBC is far less popular than Fox News. So with six times more time in publicizing, with far more televised media publicity, with both rallies having busing, with the One Nation rally being subordinate to the Stewart/Colbert rally, and Beck having media darling Sarah Palin as opposed to washed up singer Harry Bellafonte… Beck was only able to get 300,000 vs 150,000? What a failure!
Okay, enough silliness. Now to the actual reality.
Warning: Reality below. Reality has a liberal bias.
First, what about Schultz vs. Beck? The reality is that Ed Schultz is not nearly as popular as Glenn Beck. Nobody is disputing that. Ed Schultz is relatively unpopular, even among liberals. Most people don’t even know who he is. Idiot or not, Beck is popular. He's a household name, is spoofed in pop culture often, and his followers are so devoted that they leave their churches if their pastor disagrees with Glenn Beck. Why? Because Beck told them to. And they listen unquestioningly. He convinced them social justice is evil even though that's what MLK spent his life fighting for. So of course when he tells them he's "reclaiming the civil rights movement to change the world" they’ll follow. Seems like it’s only right-wing bloggers that are elevating Schultz. Are you going to deny that Beck is more popular than Schultz?
Second, what about media coverage leading up to the rallies? The reality is that Beck's rally had plenty of coverage, not just on Fox, but on all the networks. Not only that, the date alone gave it controversy, which gave it additional publicity. You couldn't go ten minutes without hearing about the Beck rally. The One Nation rally, very little coverage. Are you going to deny that?
Third, what about the fact that the Colbert/Stewart “Restore Sanity” rally was being held the same month? Which rally do you think people were going to travel to see? There have been some pretty damn small Tea Party rallies before the big Beck rally, so it's a pretty unequal comparison to take a random liberal rally that most liberals didn't go to because they'd already made plans to go to a different one a few weeks later. The real competition for the One Nation rally is The Rally to Restore Sanity. One Nation only got the folks who are willing to do two rallies in a month. Are you going to deny that?
Okay, now let’s talk about the reality of the actual attendance of Beck’s rally. Beck claimed 500,000. Some bloggers claimed 1.5 million. Lindaman’s going with some of the news announcements of 300,000.
Right-wingers lying about attendance at their rallies is nothing new. Remember the 9/12 Teabagger march? Right-wingers claimed 2 million people showed up, when it was actually about 65,000. The right-wingers even showed wrong pictures on purpose:
Anyway, because the right-wingers knew the Colbert/Stewart rally was coming… the right-wing blogosphere got the word out to really chat up the lack of attendance at an event no one knew was happening.
"Well, the lieberal lamestream media sure gave it to us good when we fibbed about the 9/12 teabagger rally... so let's take this opportunity to remind everyone that no one showed up to an event that most didn't know about. But since it was left-leaning, clearly a trillion people should have been there because they have nothing better to do. If we're lucky, we can give this horse another whack in a month when the Comedy Central guys who are hosting an event clearly non-seriously on their day off while they happen to be in DC."
Glenn Beck’s rally was not 500,000. It wasn’t even 300,000.
Ed Schultz tried to be generous and thought it would be fair to split the difference between the professional estimation of 87,000 and some of the news announcements of 300,000, which would make the Beck rally approximately 193,500.
But sorry, Ed. The Beck rally wasn’t even 193,500.
300,000 was given by some news outlets because that’s what a “park service official” told them. But, the US Parks Dept. does not give crowd estimates and has not for the last 14 years (with the one exception for the Obama inauguration, since they could be reasonably sure the POTUS wouldn't sue them like Farrakhan did). Are you going to deny this? If a news service quoted a figure that they said was from the Parks Dept., they were wrong.
CBS News was the only media outlet to hire a professional overhead photography company that specialized in estimating crowd size. Their consultant used well-established methods in making his estimate, which was double and triple checked. They also do documented time-lapsed aerial analysis of people entering/exiting. They have done similar crowd estimates for Homeland Security in the past. They're as close to unbiased as it comes.
The other crowd estimates for Beck's rally were completely anecdotal.
All of the neutral professional estimators put the Beck rally at under 100k. The three professionals hired to estimate the crowd averaged out at 76k. The “liberal” CBS went with the highest estimate of 87,000.
Here's the methodology by AirPhotosLive. Try to dispute it: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20015214-503544.html
Here’s a really cool crowd estimator photo of the Beck rally to work with:
The main problem is that most people have no idea of just how crowded 87,000 people are. They look at a lot of dots on a picture and say “Eleventy billion!”
So the Beck rally was between 70k and 90k. That’s a lot of people, no doubt. But no, that’s not good enough for right-wingers. They have to elevate it all the way up to 1.5 million. lol
There were anti-war protests during the Bush administration that were larger than anything Beck and the Tea Party have done. Some were covered by the media, but we certainly didn't see the level of coverage given to tea parties now.
Now, onto the One Nation rally numbers.
So, how many people attended the One Nation rally? Well, we don’t have an unbiased neutral professional estimator like AirPhotosLive at this rally. So any numbers being crunched would again be anecdotal. But it’s clear that Lindaman’s estimate of 150,000 at the One Nation rally is probably way too large.
But a few things can be said regarding comparing the Beck rally to the One Nation rally: Beck's rally didn't include the steps and areas immediately surrounding the Lincoln Memorial. The entire Lincoln Memorial was packed at One Nation and there were no Becksters in that area during his rally.
Now, what about the copy/paste photo of the two aerial photographs that right-wing bloggers like Lindaman are using?
The aerial photograph of the One Nation rally does not have a time stamp. So we don’t know when the photo was taken. The shadows are harsh, which indicates it was either very early or very late. Not at the rally’s peak time.
If we had a professional neutral crowd estimation service like AirPhotosLive at the One Nation rally, then we would have something to work with. But we don’t.
You want to talk about rally photos? Okay, but it won’t be in a way that you like.
Here’s a typical photo of the attendees at the Beck rally: 
Here’s a typical photo of attendees at the One Nation rally:
Slightly more diversity there, wouldn’t you say? Get it, yet?
There’s another thing I want to bring up: You right-wing bloggers bitched endlessly that the Beck rally was “non-partisan” and was “not a Conservative rally.” So why are these same right-wing bloggers now going “Ha ha epic fail!” and comparing the Beck rally to a liberal rally?
It’s because the right-wing bloggers were lying. The right-wingers are now accidentally admitting the Beck rally was indeed, a Conservative event. Thanks for finally telling the truth, guys!
Beck probably had more people at his rally, for the simple fact that Sarah Palin was there and it had a lot more publicity. But 150,000 more? No way.
But hey, leave it to right-wingers to say this shitload of people at One Nation, with little publicity and with the Colbert/Stewart rally coming soon, is an “epic fail”:
So, Lindaman… if you consider that an epic fail, what would you say about a pundit that publicized himself for years and years… and absolutely nobody came? That would be a most epically epic fail of epic proportions, right? The biggest epic failure in the history of mankind, correct? Who could that biggest epic failure possibly be?
Now, let’s move on to the real rally that truly was the counter-rally of Beck’s: The Rally To Restore Sanity by Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.
How many people attended The Rally To Restore Sanity?
Once again, we can’t go by anecdotes. We have to use neutral professional crowd estimators. And guess what? AirPhotosLive, which gave the 87,000 estimate of the Beck rally, also gave estimates of the Restore Sanity rally.
What was the professional estimate? 215,000!
That’s right, folks. The actual counter-rally had nearly two and a half times the number of people that were at Beck’s rally.
So just wait! The right-wingers will say that obviously AirPhotosLive, just like all those climatologists about manmade global warming, is liberally biased. Damn those liberals and their fully documented scientific analysis!
Beck's rally was big (70k-90k people ain't small), but it was smaller than one by liberal comedians. Presumably because more Americans believe in their message than his, right? lol
What was that about an epic fail?
The lesson to be learned here: Don’t try to dick wave, it’ll come back to haunt you.