How big was the crowd at Saturday’s tea party? Chris Weigant should know:
I’ve been in more protests on the Mall than I can count. Most in my wild and hotheaded youth, but the memories remain clear. You can easily tell the physical difference of a crowd of 100,000 and a crowd of 500,000. And it’s easy to tell when your numbers are 50,000 or less, too.
To be fair, Chris didn’t set out to judge the size of Saturday’s tea party. But after viewing the evidence, he agrees with David Shuster:
That is not 2,000,000 people.
That is not 1,000,000 people.
That is not 600,000 people.
That is not 450,000 people.Shuster’s closer to the mark. If they didn’t even get past 3rd street, they weren’t even on the Mall proper, but rather the Capitol grounds. The video’s a little jerky, but does a good job of panning around to show the whole crowd. At first I thought the stage was set up facing the Capitol, but then I realized the video was from the point of view from backstage.
“Tens of thousands” is probably about as accurate as you can get. Even 100,000 is truly stretching credulity. I would say that a fair estimate, given the fact there are people hidden by trees and the crowd seems wider than it is deep, would be in the 50,000 to 75,000 range. Say Schuster’s 30,000 as a low end, and 100,000 as the absolute upper limit. But 60,000 is probably as good as guess as anyone’s.
Here is what over a million, perhaps almost two, looks like. This is a weird photo, because of the Jumbotrons. The crowd bunches up in front of every screen, which gives it a “clustered” appearance, but you can clearly see the scope of the crowd. Look at this photo closely. The Capitol is at the far right. The blue/green curve to the left of it is water. To the left of that is 3rd Street (runs north/south or up/down on this photo). From 3rd to the Capitol is where the crowd in the video is standing.
I’ll go with 50,000 – 75,000 as my final call, to be generous.
Now, I have to admit, that’s a nice sized crowd for a demonstration. I’d call it “medium/large.” It’s an impressive thing to get 50-75K out for your cause. I’ve been to demonstrations that were lucky if they had 5,000 there. So it’s nothing to sneeze at.
But it’s nowhere near the inflated claims I’ve heard. I’d frankly be surprised if it was six digits. (Emphasis mine)
Then Chris looks at that fake photo that went viral Saturday (now positively ID’d as a Promise Keepers rally), saying it depicts “MINIMUM half a million. A million is easily believable, and even 1.5 mil isn’t out of the question. No wonder they picked it as a fake!”
Chris is right. By right-wing standards, this is an impressive crowd.
So why would FreedomWorks lie, then lie again and blame it on Twitter? It’s a time-tested propaganda technique called bandwagoning:
Bandwagon is an appeal to the subject to follow the crowd, to join in because others are doing so as well. Bandwagon propaganda is, essentially, trying to convince the subject that one side is the winning side, because more people have joined it. The subject is meant to believe that since so many people have joined, that victory is inevitable and defeat impossible. Since the average person always wants to be on the winning side, he or she is compelled to join in.
Hopefully Teh Librul Media™ will take this FreedomWorks fiasco as a cue to stop acting like stenographers and do some actual, y’know, journalism.
