Mister Snitch!: Liveblogging the war protests

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Liveblogging the war protests

David Adesnik is attending the anti-war protests in DC. He's interviewing the protesters and blogging his findings. Meanwhile, Ed McNamara is photoblogging the less-publicized support rally. These photos (scroll down) focus mainly on signage.

Who's entertaining the anti-war protesters, by way of Alarming News.

Daily Kos told its habitues not to make fools of themselves.

In some cases, at least, the warning didn't take. (More photos, some from Getty Images.) The violently-left Brad Blog has the only crowd shots we've seen where the crowds actually look substantial. (The site also has a short video featuring some marching.)

Speaking of Kos, even that site complained about the Answer Anti-War Rally: "All I see are things that I want nothing to do with." It's been said before, but if there really were a legitimate anti-war movement, it wouldn't be dominated by fringe groups. When the anti-Vietnam movement reached its zenith, it had support that transcended sociological and demographic boundaries. The anti-war proponents are trying far to hard to make it appear that way, and the seams are showing. It takes a while for this sort of sentiment to make its may to mainstream America (as it must, to be effective), and neither the time, economic impact nor body counts are there. They could be at some point, but they aren't yet. In addition, the war protesters are going out of their way to alienate mainstream America, not win it over. (When on lefty sites, we've seen the challenges to foul language and unsupportable claims met with statements along the lines of 'It's my blog, don't come in here and surpress me.' Fine with us, but the attitude and language just doesn't make new converts.)

About the numbers: LGF notes the dearth of crowd shots, making it difficult to gauge the number of people who showed up. Here is one from Yahoo, which puts the number attending at 'tens of thousands'. The Anchoress felt it was far less. Confederate Yankee mentioned that ABC News pegged it at around 2,000 and was quickly hit with derisive comments quoting the Washington Post and Reuters with numbers of '100-200,000' and 'over 100,000' respectively. Some media numbers may reflect a bias - for example, the Post yesterday called a veteran protest organizer 'a novice' to make a (false) point about changed minds regarding Iraq. Reuters last week made headlines circulating a sophomoric photo of Bush writing a note that he would need to leave a meeting for a 'bathroom break'. Some of the differences in crowd assessment may stem from how the count was done - perhaps more came to DC than actually showed up at the main rally. Significantly impacting the head count is the fact that the 2005 National Book Festival was held at the National Mall, between 7th and 14th streets from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (noted on Jeff Goldstein's blog) Last year, the NBF attracted 80,000 visitors, up from 70,000 the year before. We have yet to see these numbers, or the numbers of pro-administration activists broken out seperately.

An astute observation of crowd size in the Yahoo photo, from a Gay Patriot commenter:

n the Yahoo photo we’ve all seen, I see a crowd filling a romboid area about 400 feet wide and 400 feet tall. That’s 160,000 square feet. At 4 square feet per person (which is quite tight), that would give us 40,000 people. I don’t know if the Yahoo photo was taken at the peak population, or didn’t miss some separate but related crowd, but I am pretty sure that the photo includes a number of people within a factor of 2 of my estimate (i.e., 20,000 to 80,000). If beyond this range, the true count is more likely to be lower; because the Ellipse wasn’t even full, it is more likely that the crowd was slightly less packed than would be the case with a larger crowd (or the same crowd in a smaller setting).

This may in fact be how Yahoo came up with its estimate.

Fox News calls the anti-war demonstration "massive" and the rally supporting the administration "small".

Did Reuters, AP or WaPo take these factors into account? Was anyone asked why they were actually there? The numbers seem to depend on who the 'counters' are aiming to please. We also have reason to doubt how carefully these heads are being counted, and if in fact they were ever counted in any reasonable way at all. There seems to be a lot of wild speculation and manipulation of numbers all 'round. 2,000 (ABC) to as high as 600,000 (as a rumored CNN report had it) is quite a spread! We're guessing Yahoo offered the most neutral reporting, based partly on the fact that they were the only news outlet framing the numbers as a guesstimate. "Tens of thousands" is a statement appropriately reflecting the loose nature of the counting, and loose counting (and outright spinning) is all we are seeing here. We believe the news outlets offering hard figures are basically just posing to sound authoritative, and are making fools of themselves by doing so. If they truly knew the numbers, they could break them down by why people were in the area, giving us a total of who actually came to protest. That is the number in heavy dispute. But they don't, and can't, because that would reveal that all they were ever doing is guessing. Even the cops were guessing, and they didn't care how accurate they were (except that larger numbers might better justify their pay). The pundits' numbers, of course, reflect their positions on the political spectrum - high on the left, low on the right. Stick with Yahoo - "some tens of thousands" - and let it go at that.

Whether the turnout (whatever it was) is reflective of mainstream American opinion is the real issue. Compare images of pro-Administration and anti-Administration protesters. Our rule of thumb: The side that most closely resembles mainstream America is the side that reflects the opinions of mainstream America.