The guests for the Glen Beck rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington through the weekend are disputed. Beck claims that around 500,000 of his loyal followers arrived to pay homage. Some Republican politicians are saying a million were there. Whether or not an event is deemed significant in the media often depends upon how many people show up. Supporters exaggerate the totals while detractors scoff at their naive optimism. However an exact number of Beck’s cult members recruited to walk all over the legacy of Martin Luther King’s’ “I have a dream speech” at the site of the address on its 47th anniversary is extremely hard to figure.
Conservative bias of The rally for Glenn Beck attending
Glenn Beck rally attendance numbers reached heights upwards of 500,000, said Beck and conservative commentators such as Joe Scarborough at MSNBC. Their assertions are typical said the Christian Science Monitor. The Monitor said that numbers are influenced by the estimator’s self interest. The crowd will always appear massive to event coordinators and exceed their expectations. Critics always say the numbers were less than anticipated. There is always controversy. Following the “Million Man March” in October 1995, an official estimate of attendance by the National Park Service was about 400,000. Disputing the numbers, the event’s organizers threw their lawyers on the park service, which has since gotten out of the business of counting crowds.
Eye in the sky recognizes Beck’s baloney
Glenn Beck rally attendance was big enough to disrupt Washington’s subway service. Foregoing mere guesswork, Columbia Broadcasting System News secured the services of AirPhotosLive.com, a company specializing in aerial reconnaissance. Photos were shot from above. The crowd spread from the Lincoln Memorial around the Reflecting Pool and over to the Washington Monument . After analyzing the images, the official AirPhotosLive estimate was around 87,000. Given the estimate came with a 9,000-person margin of error, the attendance could have been someplace between 78,000 and 96,000.
Reality has not much regarding rally goers
Anywhere between 300,000 and 500,000 individuals attended his rally, Beck said the next day. Republican congresswoman Michelle Bachman, seeking to be seen and heard, declared “we’re not going to let any person get away with saying there were less than a million here today — because we were witnesses”. But Southern Fried Science offers some perspective. The blogger WhySharksMatter said an exact number makes no difference, given that Beck’s followers ignore facts and evidence anyway. As an example, he drew upon a poll by the Pew Research Center revealing that 18 percent of U.S. voters mistakenly perceive President Obama as a Muslim. The moral of the story: real truth has not enough space in politics or religion.
Christian Science Monitor
csmonitor.com
CBS
cbsnews.com
Southern Fried Science
southernfriedscience.com
