So, How Much Sanity Was There in D.C. Yesterday? (Updated)
What if they held a political rally and a rock concert broke out?
The “Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear” in Washington, D.C., on Saturday looked like it was probably generally a lot of fun. The crowd looked cheerful, and I generally like Jon Stewart and sometimes like Stephen Colbert. The music was okay — I’m a big fan of Cat Stevens, and the guy with the beard (Yusuf something?) who sang “Peace Train” did a pretty credible cover version.
But Roger didn’t ask for a review; he wanted the now-traditional Pajamas Media crowd size estimate.
As always, this would be much easier if I could get a photo of the crowd from directly overhead, and as usual, I can’t find one. Apparently, for some reason, they no longer let aircraft fly over the Capitol and White House, so we have to settle for the usual photos from locations from the Washington Monument or the like.
The AP provides us several in a slideshow. Here’s a good one:
Of course, right away we notice something: large parts of the National Mall are blocked off to the crowds. If we’re going to make an estimate, we need to know how much. AP provides us with another shot with a little bit wider angle:
…and one more from behind the stage and toward the Washington Monument, so we can see that the crowd really does stop somewhere in the middle of the Mall. In these pictures, north is to the left, so we have the crowd coming a little west of the main entrance to the National Gallery of Art on the north:
On the other side of the Mall, the crowd seems to be roughly up to the end of the National Air and Space Museum:
… while on the east end, it appears the stage is set up somewhere a little west of 4th St NW.
So I constructed a generous rectangle as the perimeter of the crowd that includes a good bit of the buildings on the sides, but then doesn’t attempt to add in the lines of people along the dirt lanes across the Mall.
Here’s the polygon I constructed:
And once again using this excellent tool, I computed the are of the whole polygon as about 150,000 square meters. Before I screw myself up with unit changes, we’ll convert that and call it 1,620,000 square feet.
But isn’t calculating the crowd density kind of the point? Unless you know that, you haven’t really estimated anything. Anyone can work out the area.
Sure, and that uncertainty is part of the reason I offer several different estimates. But work it the other direction: you’ll notice that the polygon I used includes a good bit of the Air and Space Museum, the Art Museum, the Museum of the American Indian and whatever the hell that triangular building is, and got 1.62 million square feet. A little arithmetic tells us that 215000 in 1.62 million square feet is about 7.5 square feet per person, or a square about 32 inches on a side. A standard beach towel is around 30×60.
In other words, to reach 215,000, the people would have to be packed in about two to a beach towel, over the entire polygon, including all the space occupied by those buildings.
Make your own decisions, but I don’t find that in the least plausible.
Good point, while it’s nearly impossible to get an accurate count, it’s far easier to debunk a claim based on your methodology.
Good job.
Unfunny has-beens.
Hmmmmmm. Should we believe you, who obviously has a biased, or should we believe an independent private company that get’s paid to do crowd estimates? Not to mention the Rally to Restore Sanity was obviously more densely crowded compared to the lots of green that can be seen in the aerial photos of Beck’s rally. Does your 2.4 million square feet take into account the Reflecting Pool running right through the middle of the Restoring Honor Rally? Only one scientific analysis of both rally’s occurred. Both by the same private company. Both using the same method. Rally to Restore Sanity 193,500 – 236,500, Restoring Honor Rally 78,000 – 96,000. I guess insanity will just blame it on the “liberal media”. But we all know what excuses are like.
Like the excuses your dear leader has been making for the past 2 years? When you make a living pointing the finger at others for your failures you should at least learn to be adult enough to shut up.
Neither. You should read the methods, look at the calculations, and make your own decisions. If you think it’s plausible that the whole space was packed like a Tokyo subway at rush hour, then you may be willing to believe the 215,000 number. I don’t think APL’s photos support that.
It was packed shoulder to shoulder for the crowd. From someone who went, I can personally tell you that the density that you are using to calculate estimates is just wrong. People were shoulder to shoulder the whole way to the street running parallel to the mall.
You know, it’s funny — “packed shoulder to shoulder” is exactly what people reported after attending the 8/28 rally.
I did not go to the Stewart Rally but I did go to the Beck Rally and the closest I could get to the stage was the port-a-potty area WAY back, where I could get only a partial view of one of the big screens. It was on a muddy hill, and even in this much-less-than-optimal property, it was shoulder to shoulder.
The only way people could get closer to the action was to follow the occasional emergency vehicle that parted the crowd. The cart would pass, then a couple of hundred people would follow in its wake while being covered in dust from the cart. Definitely high density at the Beck rally, no question.
to put it politely… :[.. bull :[ See I can say you’re an @$$hole without getting as stupid as you are.
LOL, what a jackass. You insult the intelligence of everyone who posts here.
That entire event was televised on C-SPAN, you dimwit, making it apparent that there were huge gaps everywhere in a conspicuously juvenile and retarded, loosely dispersed crowd, milling around aimlessly, like they were lost and looking for their mommies. Losers who had nothing else better to do on a Saturday afternoon and whose presence there served no useful purpose whatsoever. A happening like Woodstock it wasn’t. It was a waste of time and a dud. Only a genuine, authentic, braindead imbecile would fail to recognize that. (Or fools like the jackasses in the MSM.)
Telling lies is a way of life for you Democrat retards. You fool only other Democrats.
Here’s a reality check for Reality Check: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=3c6784b6-4e50-4f3a-8fc7-b60cba169384
Were you packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the middle of the exterior wall of the Air and Space museum? Because that would be AWESOME.
Chris October 31, 2010 – 1:47 am wrote,
“Hmmmmmm. Should we believe you, who obviously has a biased, or should we believe an independent private company that get’s paid to do crowd estimates?”
Hmmmmmm. Should we believe you, who obviously has a biased viewpoint, when you claim that this private company really is independent? Is it bias-free?
I know! Lets have a civil war! That’ll sort it out once and for all… or until the next time anyway.
The words “Paid” and “Unbiased” don’t mix well.
The evidence is there. Find fault in it. But ad hominem attacks does nothing but telegraph your lack of evidence.
Guess you’re one of those people that likes censoring speech that doesn’t agree with you.
Hmmmmmm. Should we believe you, who obviously has a biased, or should we believe an independent private company that get’s paid to do crowd estimates? Not to mention the Rally to Restore Sanity was obviously more densely crowded compared to the lots of green that can be seen in the aerial photos of Beck’s rally. Does your 2.4 million square feet take into account the Reflecting Pool running right through the middle of the Restoring Honor Rally? Only one scientific analysis of both rally’s occurred. Both by the same private company. Both using the same method. Rally to Restore Sanity 193,500 – 236,500, Restoring Honor Rally 78,000 – 96,000. I guess insanity will just blame it on the “liberal media”. But we all know what excuses are like.
Having an identity crisis Chris — or would that be John?
Bottom line — there’s fewer of you than there are of us, even with a professional and bought-and-paid for superstructure.
Bottom Line II — you’re all white.
“Now is not the time for compromise.” You thought Obama and the progressive left were tractionless in the mire the last year, you ain’t see nothing yet. I’m reading this morning about a potential government shut-down once Republicans are installed and start pushing back against Obama’s threatened veto’s, which is fine with me. It’ll be a nation-wide shootout at the OK Corral, and Chris, I sincerely hope you get your paycheck through some sort of Democratic funnel and it goes away just in time for Christmas.
No, you’re just an idiot who didn’t read the line “your comment is awaiting moderation” when you posted the first time. Luckily, PJM has a policy of allowing repetitious comments that complain about being censors, so when you make a fool of yourself it’s visible to everyone.
I believe this dispute will be resolved Tuesday.
Since you are still expressing your opinion here, Chris, how exactly have you been “censored”? Or do you just not understand the real meaning of the word. Let me help you: “censorship” is not the same as “honest criticism”.
I guess speech that doesn’t agree with you isn’t tolerated here. Some weak minded people can’t handle freedom.
Hmmmmmm. Should we believe you, who obviously has a biased, or should we believe an independent private company that get’s paid to do crowd estimates? Not to mention the Rally to Restore Sanity was obviously more densely crowded compared to the lots of green that can be seen in the aerial photos of Beck’s rally. Does your 2.4 million square feet take into account the Reflecting Pool running right through the middle of the Restoring Honor Rally? Only one scientific analysis of both rally’s occurred. Both by the same private company. Both using the same method. Rally to Restore Sanity 193,500 – 236,500, Restoring Honor Rally 78,000 – 96,000. I guess insanity will just blame it on the “liberal media”. But we all know what excuses are like.
Having an identity crisis John — or would that be Chris?
Coming from a representative of a group that specializes in shouting down and censoring others they disagree with really means something.
The fact of the matter is that if you had anything of value to add you would not need to lie.
John, I think you and Chris should get together. You seem to think very much alike.
Ironic that someone talking about integrity and reliability uses 2 names to cut and paste a nearly identical diatribe over and over
Looks like a Soro’s paid for ‘work from home’ scheme. All you need is a computer and a liberal/stupid outlook. Good gravy. They have to be paying somebody to troll like this. Nobody is this stupid.
Apparently Chris (John) are!
Ouch…getting caught ‘sock-puppeting’ in public. That’s gotta be embarrassing.
Your AP photo seems to be inaccurate. This one (http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2010/10/30/stewart_colbert_rally_aerial_1_620x350.JPG) and this one (http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2010/10/30/Aerial_Photo_2__370x278.jpg) show that all the space you left out was indeed filled come rally time.
Also, I’m not entirely sure about your calculations for the area of Mr. Beck’s rally. As one can see from these photographs (http://politic365.com/files/2010/08/20100828wap_rallya_500-e1283182354998.jpg and http://cdn-ugc.cafemom.com/gen/constrain/500/500/85/2010/08/28/19/4v/lz/pofn0x8s6c1d0ox.jpg?imageId=19570945), there seems to be a rather sizeable pool in the middle of everything.
Your first photo doesn’t show that — if you look carefully, it’s almost identical to my wide-format photo and cuts off in the same place, at around 7th St NW. The second photo may — it’s from a funny angle and small, so it’s hard to say — but it isn’t clear it includes much west of the line either. If you find another shot like that le me know.
As far as my photos being inaccurate, are you arguing that AP photoshopped out some of the crowd? I don’t quite get what you’re proposing.
If you look back at the linked piece on the 8/28 rally, you;ll find that I subtracted the area of the reflecting pool to get 2.4 million square feet.
“if you look carefully, it’s almost identical to my wide-format photo and cuts off in the same place, at around 7th St NW”
That’s quite incorrect. The picture I posted clearly shows the crowd extending beyond 7th st. You can see the Hirshhorn Museum on the right and the crowd very clearly extends beyond it.
“As far as my photos being inaccurate, are you arguing that AP photoshopped out some of the crowd? I don’t quite get what you’re proposing.”
The AP photo was likely taken either before the rally began (it looked like this at around 9:30) or when it ended, as people began filtering out.
LJ the picture of the crowd you furnished is a close up of the same photo, but it stops at where the crowd ends in Chris Martin’s AP photo…there are a few more people maybe, but not thousands, and my guess is the photo you chose was from the end of the event as the barriers where being removed and people starting to cut off, to me the people look like they are facing the other way, but I am not an expert and you aren’t either, choosing to compare photos that don’t contain the same amount of territory.
The gates were gone by the time the Mythbusters got onstage, around 12:30.
Now as for the photos, if you’ll notice, Mr. Martin states that from the AP photo, he estimates that the crowd ends at 7th St (see where the round building is in the lower right hand side?). I do not disagree with this assessment. However, the other photograph that I posted shows the crowd clearly extends beyond 7th st, past the round building. None of the photos show exactly how far the crowd stretches or where it ends, so I can’t say how big the crowd was, nor can I conduct any analysis of the kind Mr. Martin did.
But what I am saying is that Mr. Martin is basing his estimate on an inaccurate photograph, and that his estimate is therefore also inaccurate. To what degree, I cannot say, but I do think it is quite unlikely that you can make an accurate estimate of crowd size from any of the pictures we’ve seen.
Thanks for this, I thought I was going to have to do another article on this but you have it down pretty good.
I use the national parks estimation map for the estimation of the Beck Rally.
Here-http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-19-crowd_N.htm
I filled in the areas and then transposed the size to the other side. Maybe not as accurate of a way but I estimated for the Restoring Honor Rally of 550-675k. I attempted to contact the company that CBS quoted by email and phone. No reply by email and gave the runaround when I talked to them on the phone. They had estimated 97 or 87k. What a joke.
550k is delusional.
Free sophomoric humor and porta-pottys? Who could resist?
One finds it hard to get wotked up about any of this. Those people had to be somewhere on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. At least they weren’t knocking on doors for Denocrats. BTW, third name change for the ‘Peace Train’ guy.
Free sophomoric humor and porta-pottys? Who could resist?
Not to mention Sam Waterston reading bad poetry.
Not sure that is style of presentation is very effective. It’s so non-committal, in trying to be objective, that’s it’s almost worthless. In the end all anyone is going to do is provide an educated guess. Dragging the reader through all the methodology and possibilities doesn’t bring any clarity to the question of “what is a fair estimate of how many people were there?”. It makes for frustrating tedious reading.
Jim, that’s the way science — real science — is done. You can find lots of places to tell you that only 12 people showed up for this rally vs elenty jillion for Beck — or vice versa — if that’s what you wanted.
I’m an engineer, and I like the methodology. However, I think if you were able to get better (higher resolution) pictures from the AP or whoever took those photos, you might be able to estimate crowd densities. Because the pictures are not directly overhead you would have to calculate several scales. The way I would go about it would be from known vertical measurements in the photograph. If you knew the heights of the buildings you would be able to get a pixel to foot ratio that would be valid for that horizontal line running across the picture. With a photo that has better resolution you should almost be able to count heads and get a head to pixel ratio for various lines in the picture. Just remember if the person took this photo with a decent camera there’s a picture with at least 12 million pixels in it out there somewhere.
The only crowd estimate that really matters takes place on November 2nd. From where I sit, I think it’s going to be a huge turnout, especially for a midterm election. It will be amusing to see how Suart covers so many losses in the Democratic Party on Tuesday. I also wonder how amused he will be when he finds out that the last laugh is on him.
“Look at all those white people. What’s up with that?”
That would be the lunatics that voted for Obama and many democrats and watch that crappy television show (not that I would know because I don’t!)
CBS is so full of it. I can’t believe they would be so dishonest to put Beck’s rally at 85k and this one at 215k.
Were you actually at the rally? Because I was. A claim that the crowd extended only to 7th Street is ludicrous. A friend of mine got to the mall at 10am and the crowd was ALREADY filled back to 7th Street. By the time I got there, around 11:30, we squeezed ourselves onto the mall around 9th St but we were far from the back. A friend of mine who arrived shortly after noon was at the back of the crowd, somewhere around 14th St.
Also, the areas that were “blocked off” were overrun not far into the rally… people opened the fences and walked onto those grass areas. Honestly, I don’t know how many people were at the rally. But I feel extremely confident in a number over 150k. I would certainly believe 200k. I was not at the Beck rally so I can’t really speak to their numbers in any reliable fashion. But I have seen the photos and I think claiming that the square footage covered by it was greater than the square footage covered by this is misled at best.
Honestly, I don’t really care how many people were at either rally. I don’t care if a million people were at Beck’s rally (even if I do find his message and methods deplorable, it’s a free country) and I don’t care if I was the only one at the Stewart/Colbert rally. I think one of Stewart’s closing remarks really says it best: “If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.” Sure, let’s spend countless hours debating who is conducting a conspiracy to say how many people were where. There certainly aren’t more important issues that deserve our attention.
You spend your time posting on how many lefties showed up for the Stewart Smirkathon, then demand that we abandon the discussion (giving you the last word) because there are more important issues. A weak gambit – but I wouldn’t expect better from someone who wasted his time at the clownfest or is lying about having done so.
Not everyone at the rally, myself included, was a “lefty”. Sure, some of them were. But I’m pretty sure most people there were moderate/bipartisan. There were a lot of signs like this one:
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs467.ash2/74057_997349341818_5703005_52661828_3893575_n.jpg
That’s me by the way. The rally wasn’t anti-conservative or pro-liberal. It was anti-hate and pro-thought. It was about being able to disagree respectfully and stop being sheep, following the overreactions of the media to everything. Stewart’s closing remarks summed up the rally very well. Of course, you’ll watch this and of course find an extreme leftist agenda, but here it is nonetheless: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXmbzLI3pnk
And I never demanded anything. I just think these measuring contests are juvenile, but when in Rome…
If you do not remember Rathergate, read Bernie Goldberg’s books Bias and Arrogance. This is SOP for CBS.
are you being sarcastic about Cat Stevens? you know that was the REAL cat stevens right?
*sigh*
No, he hasn’t a clue, Jamie. Here’s the secret: everybody is a moron except you. Make sure you keep telling everyone that.
Nice work. It is good to see some honest analytical analysis of something that the main stream media should be able to handle accurately but does not due to political bias.
You’re still missing the big question. What we all really want to know is, in what condition did they leave the National Mall?
Charlie, CU’s reputation in the 90′s was synonomous with ‘party’ amongst us attending elsewhere. It didn’t hurt having Bieniemy, McGhee, Pritchard, Stewart on the football team to boot!
As for this concert, I’m glad to see those in attendance had a good time. Though I have to ask, does the Liberal base REALLY believe Obama’s appearance and this comedy duo’s outing will assist in rallying like-minded voters?
Desperation is the world’s worst deodorant.
As for the music, Sheryl Crow.. I’ll pass. One of the least talented female musicians of all-time though she knows how to market herself.
U2.. oh yeah. A GREAT band up until 1987 when they started producing only garbage, Top 40 music.
As for the bearded guy, you may be referring to ‘Kid Rock’ – an untalented 90′s ‘musician’ whose infamy is due to the advent of ‘rap-metal’ and his doing covers of other rock bands (I remember him doing Grand Funk Railroad’s ‘Were An American Band – the man has no shame) classics whereas he hasn’t the lungs to do so. Oh and he apparently it was his turn/raffle to date Pamela Anderson for a time.
Paul, I’m afraid that by the 90′s it was my classmates’ children attending CU.
Two Cowards held either a Political Rally or an Entertainment/Comedy Festival. Which was it?
Either way these two moral bankrupts will claim they “Won”. ho hum.
The Crowd were mainly real ’60s era Hippies trying to reclaim the “Buzz” of the Sixties, or Young folk wishing they had been born in time for the ’60s.
As one famous wit said “Today was the day that Parents aired out the house and cleaned up the mess from all the stay home 30something Couch Potato’s that actually watch Stewart and Colbert”.
Restoring honor is what matters to the future of this country for our children and future generations. That’s the bottom line – can’t wait till these come of age ’60′s America hating vermin cease to have any influence on the direction of this country. It’s time.
Very sound and poignant analysis, and the math is all correct, but I don’t think you’re emphasizing population density nearly enough. As you have freely admitted, Stewart’s rally felt more like a free concert, and what is the floor of a gigantic, open air concert, if not the ultimate sardine can experience? All reports that I’ve heard and read from the Mall indicate that it was cramped beyond belief. People were getting crushed and squeezed out of all personal comfort zones. Moreover, there were still tens of thousands of people who arrived late (or couldn’t arrive at all because the transit authorities were not anticipating that much traffic — metro lines were backed up for hours) and gave up and went somewhere else because they couldn’t procure decent viewing positions. Statistically speaking, it is reasonable to estimate that the rally numbers lean somewhere between 2.5 and 5 sq. feet per person. Maybe even smaller in some parts (like at the very front).
Beck’s rally, by contrast, was not set up as a concert and so did not contain any of its trappings. Its attendees treated it more like a picnic or a tailgate. They brought tables and chairs and bicycles, their own food, they picked a camping spot and hung out in the sun for a day. Many of them played music and games, with huge outdoor umbrellas and tents. There are enough ground-level videos, photographs and interviews to affirm these assertions. And they were definitely more spread out. It’s reasonable to estimate that the rally numbers lean somewhere around 10 sq. feet per person. Maybe more, especially if the sample size goes all the way back to the Washington Monument (I also hope that you remembered to subtract the surface area of the reflecting pool from your analysis, since it can’t really be included).
There is no indication that the attendees of the Rally to Restore Sanity brought anything but themselves. Thicker jackets for cooler weather, but no serious baggage. Both rallies had more than their share of costumes and signs, however.
I should disclose that I do not believe that Stewart’s rally had anywhere near 648,000 people, just as I don’t believe that Beck’s rally had 87,000. The truth for both is somewhere in the middle, of course. I just wanted to explain how a rally 0.6 times the size of another rally could possibly have an equivalent number of people or perhaps even more, all due to density.
Hi kenneth. I was at both events. Albeit at the Summer rally for a short time.
I walked through the Mall on the way to Chinatown after soccer practice yesterday.
You’re grossly overestimating the ’10 sq. feet per person’ regarding the Beck/Palin comment. Yes, there were umbrellas and other types of sun shelters placed, but under these same structures were people STANDING and SITTING beside one another. Huddled IN the shade where possible.
If it wasn’t so incredibly schlocky, that pathetic event wouldn’t even be newsworthy.
Hmmm…what I want to see are pictures of the “aftermath”. Did this crowd of “sane” people clean up after themselves like the 9-12ers and the folks who went to the Restore Honor rally? Or did they trash the place like the idiots at the One Nation rally?
Stewart and Colbert are of the opinion that they are the pulse of the American people. They think they can sway the way people think about politics and how folks will vote. I’m afraid they’re going to have a rude awakening Wednesday morning.
Mike
“Hmmm…what I want to see are pictures of the “aftermath”. Did this crowd of “sane” people clean up after themselves like the 9-12ers and the folks who went to the Restore Honor rally? Or did they trash the place like the idiots at the One Nation rally?”
Here is a ground report from someone at hillbuzz.
Ah, yes, Hillbuzz. That bastion of honesty and impartiality.
To answer the article title; More sanity at this organized confusion, than when Congress is in session. And since there were no reports of anyone being wounded, the security was better, too.
A U2 concert featuring a has been who favours the death of other “artists” for “blasphemy”, of all things. Cat Yusuf Steven Demetre Georgiou Stephens Islam sucks Charlie. Just saying.
Dammit, I was being subtle again. I’ve never really goten the hang of subtle.
By the way; Nice metrical analysis.
The 87,000 estimate of the Glen Beck rally used by SeeBS came from AirphotosLive.Com.
AirPhotosLive.Com, if you note from that link to a Google search, is also the source of a 215,000 estimate for the Stewart Rally.
What we can conclude is that AirPhotosLive is a clearly untrustworthy source.
not to mention, they are paid to tell the employer…paid to tell them whatever they want to hear from them, thulsy,they are NOT an independent analysis
Because, clearly, when numbers do not favor your side of things, they must be biased. Just like how NBA refs have a clear pro-Lakers bias.
Look what we know is that for the 8/28 rally, their estimate was dramatically lower than anyone else’s — by a factor of 3 or more. This time, their estimate is dramatically higher than anyone else’s, by a factor of two or more.
Ignore any question of bias — when your method produces two wild outliers, you have to question the methodology’s usefulness.
No LJ, it’s when someone makes an incredible claim they lose credibility.
Why should we accept AirPhotoLive.com’s authority?
Well, um, because, um because CBS, um,uses them and, um, their name is AirPhotosLive.Com and, um, they have a website, and, um, they agree with me.
Right? Those really are the only reasons you have for citing them, aren’t they?
Their crowd claim with regard to the Beck rally was about a third of the next lowest. Their crowd claim with regard to the Stewart rally was by far the highest of any organization claiming to use objective criteria.
And of course, they work for CBS. Hey, LJ, you think there might have been any sex offenders in Stewart’s crowd?
Any information coming from AirPhotosLive.Com should be treated as information from Pravda was treated during the Cold War.
“Why should we accept AirPhotoLive.com’s authority?”
You don’t have to. Click on the pics they posted at Photosynth:
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=20e143f6-2e3c-43ce-ad35-7c91a7b25f56
photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=3c6784b6-4e50-4f3a-8fc7-b60cba169384
Then use the zoom function and count the people yourself. If you like you can use the handy grid function at the Stewart rally link.
IOW, it’s on the internet so it must be true
I’ll start considering AirPhotosLive claims when they release all the raw data for analysis by third parties.
It’s not so much how many were there….Beck’s rally had more…this one was close…but regardless, it’s WHY they were there.
Beck’s rally had hundreds of thousands of people who have a genuine love for their country…and they simply want it back from progressive leftist hijackers.
Stewart’s rally was a concert…a comedy parody of the Beck rally…and rather than pay their way to the concert…the participants were paid to attend…and I don’t blame them!
Free this, free that…a great paid day off, hell, who wouldn’t go? But they were there for a good time…a lark, a spree, it’s very clear to see…oh wait..sorry.
So I don’t look for how many…I look at the reason people attend. It is a stark example of the love of country conservatives vs the party hardy free ride liberals…remember..not the amount of people…the character of those people that actually counts.
Well, I guess if character is measured by oldness and whiteness and curmudgeonry, then yeah, I guess Beck’s “You Punk Kids Get Off My Lawn” Rally was just bursting at the seams with character.
Yesterday was another bad day for Democrats.
1. Obama was heckled and jeered by Democrats at a speech that he gave in Connecticut.
2. John Boehner gave one of his most inspirational speeches ever in Ohio.
3. John Stewart’s silly so-called “rally” in Washington was a flop and a fiasco.
The Sanity/Fear rally wasn’t exactly a fiasco, but heavily attended and pretty entertaining. However, I suspect it did as much to help the congressional democrats as intended: ZERO.
Chocolate ice cream is white.
It was a full sun tonight.
Glann beck is msart.
How’s life in upside-down land?
Great work and great ending. You are my semi-official crowd estimator for evah, Charlie.
glad they had a good rally hope it was better the glen becks bringon the stupid
Nah, Beck couldn’t use that name even if he wanted to; the Dems already have it copyrighted for their 2012 national convention.
Heh heh heh… you’re a comedian!
Charlie,
As a fellow PJM blogger, I’d like to ask you this: Were you at both rallies? If the answer is no, then, I’m really not buying either of the numbers. I didn’t buy the numbers from that company that did the analyses either.
If you were at the rally yesterday, then you would have noticed the thousands that were on the streets leading up to the mall that are not in the pictures that you used to analyze the numbers here. I was there. I saw how big it was. The numbers you give out don’t even come close.
Secondly, most of us had no idea who was going to be there. Cat Stevens, Ozzy and the others that showed up were a surprise to most of the people I encountered. (I was there to cover it for a publication so I did ask those questions.) It was not an open air rock concert. If people knew Ozzy was going to be there, I expect the crowd to have been much larger.
As a fellow PJM blogger, I’d like to ask you this: Were you at both rallies? If the answer is no, then, I’m really not buying either of the numbers. I didn’t buy the numbers from that company that did the analyses either.
Josh, I wasn’t, being a cranky old hermit in Colorado. But as I said above, I’m not asking you to believe my numbers, I’m saying here are my methods, think for yourself. The points you raise are valid; make your own estimate. But then compute an estimate for the Beck rally on the same basis. Since I used exactly the same method — hell, I used the same spreadsheet — then that article should have under-estimated by a proportional amount.
This article would have been improved if you had done a chart with the each set of assumptions on its own row, and the three rallies side-by-side, each to a column. It would have made your calculations and the resulting relative sizes of the crowds more useful.
Ultimately, the actual number isn’t that important. That the intellectual center of gravity of the Left is now two self-described “fake news shows” has to be the big story here. Obama’s getting heckled by his own supporters. Clinton can’t fill a high school gymnasium. Escapism seems to have taken over the “reality-based community” (much as the West Wing).
College-aged lefty activists are eager to show up at free shows, but with the election two days away, shouldn’t they be ringing doorbells, working phone banks, and otherwise getting out the vote? You know, like we are? A month ago, this might have shifted the momentum, but the election is two days away. A big event in DC can’t match hundreds of thousands of people volunteers in their communities (on the other hand, maybe that’s what this whole election is about).
The other issue is the message. The two messages of this rally are: “Tea parties are hysterical and ignorant.” and “Moderation and civility.” Never mind the tension between these messages for a second: are the messages themselves going to help the Democrats even individually?
1) People remember the attacks on George Bush and Dick Cheney, and all the rhetoric used to defend the vitriol. So why the change of heart? People aren’t that stupid, no matter what Jon Stewart thinks.
2) People can still hear the attacks on Sarah Palin, Meg Whitman, Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, and Glen Beck. In fact, attacks like that were launched at the rally. Conservatives are mostly sticking to the issues this cycle; liberals have fired off the biggest broadside of vicious personal slimes in recent memory. Stewart himself, as a “fake news show” comedian, is a ringleader.
3) The attacks above are primarily personal, or even aimed at family members. The Tea Parties are relentlessly focused on issues. So it isn’t just the emotional hysteria from the left, it’s the content of their assertions, too.
4) Stewart’s well-publicized interview with President Obama didn’t exactly go swimmingly for the President. But Stewart’s criticism was that Obama is (not kidding here) not extreme enough. So which is it? Stewart’s talking out one side of his mouth demanding compromise and centrism, and out the other demanding that the most liberal administration in history lurch even further to the left.
5) The key critique of the Obama administration that’s winning with independents is that the stimulus and ObamaCare were far too left-wing. So why push people to demand moderation when the Tea Parties and Republicans are the only game in town for moderates?
So, all in all, even if this rally had been a big success, what exactly was it supposed to have accomplished? Leaves me scratching my head.
Sorry, should have commented on this before. I was up late.
It was not an open air rock concert.
Okay, so it was an open-air comedy concert. The point is that it was being run and promoted — with things like the proscenium, and a stage with both flying and trapdoor gags, and the futile attempt to say only Comedy Central could make recordings –much more like a concert than a rally.
I was just going to post the same thing.
The attendees didn’t know Cat Stevens or Ozzie Ozborne were going to perform, but they did know that someone was going to perform. They knew there would be music and comedy. The vast majority were there for the free show, but there were plenty there to make leftist political statements as well.;
Charlie, Jackson;
I’d go a step further; Stewart and Colbert are unquestionably Democrats.
As long as we’re assigning motivations to others, everyone at the Glenn Beck 8/28 rally was there to see Joe dee Messina.
Cat Stevens was at that dopefest,And they called it restoring sanity?One couldn’t make-up,A greater Example of insanity,And hypocrisy.It should have been a punchline,on Jon Stewart’s comedy show,And all the late night comedy/talk shows.Cat Stevens;Declared enemy of america;This guy should be on a no-fly list,But is applauded,Worshipped,And sainted,At a dopefest instead.Wow;But not surprising.Joe Kennedy,and Ted Kennedy both were Loyal Socialist,Marxist Communist,And Anti-semites,And Sympathyzers of the Palestinian’s,And Yassar Arafat.John Kennedy,And Bobby Kennedy were not.They were about Free Enterprise Capitalism,Were at war with Marxist communist,Mafia Union Thugs,Anti-Communism in Cuba,Fidel Castro,And Pro-American Exceptionalism,Tax cuts,Individual,And Religious Freedom,Pro Orthodox Catholic,Christianity,America Judiaism,And Israel.Complete Opposites of Joe Kennedy,And Later Ted Kennedy.Not to forget L.B.J.Who john,and Bobby,Both saw as a fool,And a joke,And treated him as such.Only reason He was Vice President,Was because their Political Srategist felt they couldn’t win texas with-out him.Just the same reason Bill Clinton picked a clueless moron,From tennesee,Named,Al Gore.Joe Kennedy Promised if these groups would put their money,and power,Behind John Kennedy’s Presidency,And if they did Joe Kennedy Would control the Whitehouse,And Congress,Through his sons,To the liking of these Marxist Communist Mafia Union thugs,Fidel Castro,The Soviet Union,And Hollywood Underground Communist Sympathyzers,Their Money,Influence,and Power.And Middle Eastern Investments,Into Hollywood,And Corrupt Businesses,And Politicians To Sway Influence,Over American Interest,To Their Interest.Which was Socialism,Communism,And Islam over Christianity,American Traditions,Institutions,Beliefs,and Ally With Those Less favorable to The American way,Like being Pro-Israel,And Peace,And Safety,For its people.Wink,and a Nod looking the other way,And more favorable toward the Palestinian Wishes.When John,and Bobby Kennedy Rejected their Fathers Wishes,And the Special Interest Traitors,And Foreign Enemies Return for their Investment.Suddenly both are Assassinated.But by Who?John Kennedy Assassinated by A marxist Communist Sympathyzer;”Lee Harvey Oswald”Bobby Kennedy was Warned not to be his Brothers Keeper,And Run for President.But He Rejected that,as well.Result Assassinated.By Who?A Radical Palestinian Muslim,Named;”Sirhan Sirhan”Fast foward A generation,A new Democray Party Aristocricy has moved the world,The Kennedy’s Re-Incarnated Per se’And they were perfect to be molded into the Joe,And now Ted Kennedy Legacy,And Ultimate Plan,IN the Works since Calvin Coolidge.All was going Exactly as planned.Promote,and Establish Socialist/Communist/And Islamic Sympathy,Programs,And Dis-Mantle American,Traditions,Institutions.Declare them Outdated,Hostile,And Dis-credit their Legitamacy.And all was going well until,Sex offender Bill got caught with his fingers in the honey pot.And except for sexually frustrated lonely women,Manhaters,and Maneaters.Bill’s credibility was spiraling out of control.His,and Hillary beliefs,and socialist/communist policies,and his attempts to suck-up to Yassar Arafat,Was falling apart. Hillary was still on board.But Bill the cheater that he is. through the communist/Islamic Sympathyser Democrats Like Ted Kennedy,And his dad’s 50 Year dream,Power,And Congress,Under the Bus.For his own self-Preservation.Lets not lose sight though Bill,and Hillary are true Loyalist to the Communist/Islamic,Anti-Christian,Anti-semite cause.Remember the Waco Incident Was pre-planned to find a Nut,And Portray this Insane Movement,As what all Christians,and gun owners are like.AS the Biggest threat to the democrat party causes are; God,Jesus Christ,Family,Independence,Individual,State,and National Security,And sovereignty,The Christian Coalition,The U.S.Military,And the N.R.A.Were the Clintons greatest Obstacles for a coo-take-over. Waco was their Percieved Ace in the Hole.But like every thing else Backfired.When will it become obvious That what The democrat party always paints as radical are all Pro-life,Pro-liberty,Pro-Independence,pro-God,pro-Jesus Christ,Pro-Military,Pro-Family,Pro-America,Pro-Truth,Equality,and justice for all.Does anybody believe for One minute, that Hillary clinton,and the clinton machine could be defeated,By Barack Obama;Community Organizer;Hell no;They were defeated by the 50 year dream of Joe kennedy,and his dream of communist,and Islamic relations,Under the United Nations,And the New World Order.This Movement felt Betrayed by their crowned prince,and princess,Bill,And Hillary,Self-Preservationist move to the right.Even though they are trying to win back the trust of america’s enemies today.Which explains Hillary’s Reset button with Russia,and putin,As well Bill constant Visits to the middle east.For what I call Bill,and Hillary’s Excellent Adventures.Barack Obama was prime pickings For the Socialist,Marxist Communist,Islamic,Multi-Cultural Liberation Theology Revolution/Movement.From his birth through childhood to Adulthood The Perfect Manchurian Candidate.with-out Fear from his Puppeteers,Of straying from the Flock,Or cause.Everyone has many conspiracy theorys as to Who,How,And Why?John,And Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.This is my theory.I believe Because they broke the promises of Joe Kennedy’s Promises to his Marxist,And Islamic Family,Allies,and Friends.John,And Bobby Kennedy Were Sacrificed,As traitors to the movement.Literally Becoming like the Godfather Saga,and John,And Bobby was Considered Fredo; For Betraying the Family trust.Did Joe Kennedy Do IT?NO;But he knew it was going to happen.Again the Hit men;A marxist Communist Sympathyzer;”Lee Harvey Oswald,”And an Islamic Palestianian Muslim Sympathyzer;”Sirhan Sirhan”Just look who has been Taking,Denying destroying rights,Property,Lives,And Liberties today.Progressive Liberalism,Under Political Correctness;Which is;Forced Marxist Communism; Islam,Under Shari’a Law;Which is Forced Islam;Joe Kennedy’s Dream Has been resurrected.Joe McCarthy tried to Warn us.He just made the mistake of wire tapping.But of course No one believes the Democrat Party,Would do such a corrupt thing,As Wiretap American Citizens,Nixonian Tactics,Only Ride Elephants,RIGHT;No; Its Always These Anti-Human life,And Liberty,Poor excuses for humanity,And Deciples of Satan,That are willing to murder,Abandon,And Betray their own,To convenience,And advance their own agenda’s,And Lives.I Know I Steered off topic,and went on a rant,I’m sorry;But to find out why these people believe what they belief. You have to go to the core.To believe my theory or not,Is Your call.Jimmy Joe,The Liarfryer
If you hit enter, you can create breaks in texts, you know.
Obviously too much caffeine…
Ouch, my eyes!
You know, there are starving children in Somalia who could use those commas.
This argument over “my (blank) is bigger than your (blank) is getting ridiculous. I’m not even sure why I read this article – or the posts that followed. Could not help but comment to Chris/John in his/her moment of identity crisis. Figure it out yet John/Chris? Which is it anyway?
Tuesday one side or the other can brag about who got the bigger vote — and that is what this is really all about – who’s right and who’s wrong — right? I think it’ll be a good day — for the right.
After Tuesday, no one is going to give a rat’s ass about Beck vs these two schmoes anyway.
Why bother with estimates?
Tuesday’s numbers will do nicely.
There are obvious conclusions from yesterday’s event. The crowd size was smaller than the Beck event. The speakers were entertainers, not politicians. There was no one at yesterday’s event who has run for one of the highest offices in our nation. Entertainers make a living by attracting crowds; it is in their best interest to create events, buzz. People came to be entertained, and hopefully they were. But politicians live and die by elections; next Tuesday will be their big event.
In this era of fuzzy boundaries between life or death issues, and comedy, I note that folks like Will Rogers once brought humor by pointing out the absurdities in politics, on both sides. However, yesterday’s event was a counter movement, partisan politics in faint disguise. Which leads me to a horrible conclusion: some extremely immature people will cast their vote based on no core beliefs, but on pure nonsense. It never leaves my mind that in a post election interview, some young man said he had voted for Bill Clinton, for President, because the candidate played the saxophone. Yet one prime duty of the President is to authorize the launching of some 10,000 thermonuclear weapons against our enemy. The fate of our nation hangs on Tuesday’s decisions; I hope that non serious people stay home and watch TV.
Democracy requires adults.
I’m assuming you couldn’t be bothered to listen or watch any of the rally before judging it. Which makes Jon Stewart’s speech at the end so much more poignant. Which you didn’t hear.
I know that Mr. Seward has never held political office. I know he is a comedian; he deals in fantasy. I know he is glib, but that whatever his words are, they will not, or should not, impact serious voter decisions. There are many famous entertainers, who succeed in the field of fantasy, who, for some reason, develop a self image as having something of substance to contribute to a real world, in real danger. You are correct, If I wanted laughs, I might have listened to him, but I was working yesterday. I did not miss anything other than words of little lasting value. This article scoped the crowd size. My thoughts were on the reasons why people attended, and what distinction, if any, they might have, between their enjoyment of the festivities and their conduct on Tuesday. It is very dangerous to confuse fantasy with reality. Children do it; adults must not.
“I know that Mr. Seward [sic] has never held political office.”
Neither has Glenn Beck.
Honestly, here is the youtube link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXmbzLI3pnk&feature=share). It’s not glib. It’s not partisan. It’s a message that I think you can agree with. That everyone can agree with. Just take the time to listen, rather than make assumptions and reject out of hand.
As was said, Mr. Beck has also never held political office. And he sells a gold-cashing service on his show, which is on a supposed news network. He deals in opinion and fantasy as well.
Silly person — you must be REALLY young and/or naive to leave yourself open by using a word like “assuming”. Because by now, everyone knows that when YOU assume, U make an ass out of you and try to make one out of me — which I resent … a lot.
Now run away. It’s time for bed for tots like you, and the adults want to talk.
It just hit me, I know what kind of television comedy / reality show that could become #1, let’s have Jon Stewert interview Barry Barak Hussen Soetoro Obama, Karzai, Karza’s brother, and the Taliban while their picking the poppys in the fields for the heroin that they ship to America. What do ya think people? Since Jon and Comedy Central have proven that nothing is sacred for satire and that they will even give in to the threat by a group of radical muslims (like the press likes to call them) or just “the un-named” (like Barry “the Anointed One” likes to call them) or toilet paper (like Americans over the ages of twelve like to call them), it could be a hit. Hollyweird would go wild. One additional thought, to make it hit #1 internationally over the globe, let’s have the United Nations thrown in to be interviewed. Well, come to think of it, maybe that’s not such a good idea, if the U.N. is involved, they will steal everything and then say the the US took it. As far as the “Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear” is concerned, the only crowd estimate that really matters takes place on November 2nd. November 3rd will be the only time I will watch Comedy Central just to see how Jon covers so many losses in the Democratic Party on Tuesday. I also wonder how amused he will be when he finds out that the last laugh is on him. And calling it a rally? It was a rock concert. Who’s laughing now?
I am interested in knowing if the Stewart/Colbert event attenders left the place trashed, the way liberals usually do (let someone else clean up their mess). But if CAMERAS were banned—how will we ever know? I guess someone who lives in WDC needs to get out there today and give us a report.
I was wondering that, too, and know what answer I’ll bet on. In fact, the thought occurred that THIS is the reason camera’s were banned in the first place, because the lazy liberals have such a track record of trashing the joint the last two years whenever more than two of them congregate.
It’s factually incorrect that cameras were banned. They were all over the place. Additionally, that’s not the least bit enforceable in the smart phone age. Read the link provided in the article, the “camera ban” actually refers to outside media taping The Daily Show episodes that aired earlier in the week.
I saw zero litter. Stewart made a big deal of it and word was passed through the crowd. However, there was probably some some-where even with the low end of the estimates there were too many people to think 100% would be neat.
You can easily use this tool (http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-area-calculator-tool.htm) and calculate the area of the reflecting pool. The entire length of the pool comes out to approx. 296420.46 square feet.
Rounding up and taking 300,000 off the 2.4 million 8/28 rally estimate still gives it the edge over 10/30.
K, if you’ll look back at my my first post on the 8/28 rally you’ll see that I subtracted out the reflecting pool to get 2.4 million square feet.
Thanks. Sorry ’bout that. Slow this morning.
Believe me I sympathize: I was up until four. I’m getting too old for this shit.
Not a chance. Not even if they were packed in olive oil.
Wouldn’t the attendees have to pay extra for that?
You know what the best part about that rally was?
The young-uns were having fun… while the grown-ups were doing responsible things, such as… ahem… VOTING!
It must have been a great child-care service…
I wonder when one of Cat Stevens’ happy little fellow jihadists are going to figure out that something like this would be the very definition of a “target rich environment.”
And you know in a Comedy Central crowd, absolutely no one would be packing anything for self protection (except an overly educated and self-satisfied brain and a snarky tongue).
Ah. Good to know what kind of people frequent this blog.
I for one don’t feel gays should be stoned. How does Joe Muslim feel about it?
CBS is having conspiracy complaints of interfering with the Federal Election in the Alaska Senate race AND a MENDACITY problem with phony enthusiasm for Comic Relief.
But did they “protect” the Dude’s “Change”?
One good thing about this rally is that none of the attendees were working the get-out-the-vote phone banks for Democrats.
“This argument over “my (blank) is bigger than your (blank) is getting ridiculous.”
I have mixed feelings about this. One one level, you are definately right. At the same time, this “measuring contest” was the entire point of the Rally. This was the political equvilent of a Hail Mary pass with five seconds to go in the 4th quarter. The whole point was to have a rally that draws a lot of people that will allow those in the “unbiased” MSM to claim the rally was larger than the Beck rally thus giving Dem partisants “hope” that there will not be less “change” on Tuesday than they fear, and therefore motivate them to turn out and vote.
The fact that, but for this rally, many of these folks would be out door to door in their home precincts canvasing potential Dems to vote (like I’m about to do) shows you how dire this situation is and how important a strong numbers “estimate” from the media really is to Dems chances on Tuesday. And if THEY think a bullish rally estimate is important to this cause, then I’m kind of inclined to think so too.
“I’m a big fan of Cat Stevens, and the guy with the beard (Yusuf something?) who sang “Peace Train” did a pretty credible cover version.”
are you serious??? – I’m in awe of the breadth of your musical knowledge – is it possible your analysis of crowd estimates may also suffer from a lack of cultural vision? Me thinks you should just stop while you are way behind and just go with the experts estimates on crowd size. Not that size matters…..
To lay it out simply and directly Yusuf Islam is Cat Stevens. Must have been one heck of a cover version.
Must get tiring, carrying around that huge brain of yours.
Sure told that idiot, though! Ha ha! Bet he never writes another piece again! Now don’t you have some more library paste to eat?
I’m guessing that sarcasm/satire isn’t your forte?
Apparently humor has a liberal bias as well (see The 1/2 Hour News Hour; see also An American Carol).
Are you serious? I’m in awe of the depth of your sarcasm detection.
are you serious???
Actually, no, that was what we professional writers call “a joke”.
As it was, the folks in the sidebar added the link to Ed’s piece on “Yusuf” fearing that people wouldn’t get the joke.
I guess they were right.
I think you and your gigantically brilliant brain just fell crainium-first into the sarchasm.
Even if the CBS estimates are 100% correct the fact that 87,000 hard working Americans took time out of their busy lives to show up to the Beck Rally on their own time and at their own expense signals a coming earthquake in American politics.
Why don’t conservatives attend protests? Because they’re too busy working.
Argue all you want about crowd size but when your de facto leader is not your sitting president but a comedian who hosts a fake news show, your movement is bankrupt.
See you Tuesday.
Yes, and your defacto leaders are two recovering addict shock jocks who belong in institutions, a woman who quit her job as small town mayor because it was too gosh darned hard for her, and a revolving cast of sociopaths who cheat on their wives and troll for gay sex in airport bathrooms while hiding behind fake Christian values. Your glass house is a perfect spot from which to throw stones, friendo.
A Trifecta of Talking Points! You are the Grand Prize winner! Don, tell him what he won…
The only numbers that will count will be those who rally on Tuesday. Sure, hundreds, if not thousands, of people who don’t agree with a comedian’s politics will come to see a free rally and listen to a comedian who, until recently, was actually pretty funny. I watched soldiers laughing all the time at both Colbert and Stewart at the mess halls in Iraq. I doubt more than 10% were in agreement with their politics. Hell, Colbert’s tour in Iraq was well attended, and I hear he was very well received…and funny. There were, on the other hand, very few people who would disagree with Glenn Beck who would attend a free Glenn Beck rally. There would be no point, really. Just on that difference alone, there can be no logical connection between size of the crowds and political leaning/voting of the crowd. And isn’t that the whole reason for going through this exercise; to SWAG the chances for Left vs. Right victories coming on Tuesday?
Aaaaaah! Too, much, math, my brain is locking up. Someone give me an x-box controller, and turn on Call of Duty. I, can’t, hold, on, much longer.
I went and I came away with this conclusion…the dems are getting killed in this next election cycle. Its easy to get hipsters to show up, wear silly costumes, and hold up what they think are ironic signs. It fits into their concept of of “cool”. What isn’t cool is standing up for something or holding any values that someone might mock…hence I feel safe in assuming that not even 1/3rd of the people I saw at the event will vote or even get registered. It doesn’t matter if that heathen Glenn Beck has a larger crowd or not, they have discipline and will go out and vote. This whole event was just mental masturbation for wannabe cool kids.
THAT man gets it.
Estimating crowd size on the National Mall is fast becoming a favorite American past-time. As if the right and the left needed something else to argue about.
So, I propose that Pajamas Media hold a small rally to “Estimate Crowd Size on the National Mall Rally”. Find a few hundred volunteers to assemble on the Mall and arrange themselves as per the above post: one person per 2.5 square feet and so on. Take some photographs from a plane overhead to record what each of the scenarios look like and then use them to calculate crowd size.
To have some fun, reach out to the Huffington Post to get involved. Who knows what could happen?
SGL, I really like this idea, with the one caveat that the FAA really doesn’t apparently like to let planes fly low over the Mall; some silly concern about terrorism or something. APL’s idea about using aerostats — read “balloons” — to take overhead pictures seems like a good one, but as I mentioned in another comment, their estimates always seem to be radical outliers to everyone else; this makes me suspicious of the method.
Even will all the astroturf and freebies at the previous Stewart shtick rally, it wasn’t enough to bribe the knuckle-dragging mongrels from their parent’s basement – they had to go bigger, with a free concert, a blatant, guaranteed gimmick to pad the audience with tourists who wouldn’t have known what was going on, otherwise – I’ll wager 20-25% of those people were tourists and/or only came to see the concert.
Bribery: the meat and potatoes of liberalism
Reasonable methodology. Thank you.
Of course we want the crowd size estimates, even though the only number that really matters is the vote. This is a country were at least 25% of the population can quote stats from the Monday Night Football game.
The analysis really isn’t going to necessarily be that accurate. The FACT is that this “show” was substantially smaller than Glenn’s rally by probably more than half.
A quick look at the crowd shows two things: 1) they are intentionally packed like sardines, and 2)there are no families.
The clueless clown “circus” had an objective here or presenting this “crowd” of comedy followers as much larger than it was.
Also, this group of clown followers are primarily people who mirror the demographics of Stewart and Colbert (is that his name). They are NOT going to make an iota of difference in the election on Tuesday, nor will they matter as their Progressive ideology and Ignorance is ground into the dust in the following years.
The Day of Progressive, Socialist, Marxist Economic and Political Schemes is OVER! Bye bye Bozos.
So putting the word FACT in all caps makes it a fact, does it? That’s good to know. jgreene, your phony grifter prophet Glenn was wrong. We DO surround you. This rally makes it abundantly clear once and for all. We don’t care whether you folks go gentle into that good night, or whether you rage with your tinfoil hats and Gadsden flags against the dying of the light. The truth is you “Me First” baby boomers have failed us and your time is over. Get onto your motorized scooter and make tracks.
TT, in the inimitable words of Rorschach, we’re not trapped in here with you; you’re trapped in here with us.
Vote Democrat, kid. The boomers thank you for the Social Security.
And who do you think, btw, is the one getting stuck with paying off that $14 trillion debt?
Tell you what, show up with the cattle cars on Nov 3 after you crush all of us and start herding.
See, here’s why I can tell the Right is tolerant and the Left isn’t: my America has room for you, yours has room only for yourselves.
Unless you’re gay. Or atheist. Or, god help you, a gay atheist.
And that means what, exactly? No conservative gays? No conservative atheists? Based on what – your total unfamiliarity with any? Because it couldn’t be that any who are would keep to themselves in the face of your overwhelming smug superiority?
Do you people ever experience a moment of shame, as you think “Damn, I just said (wrote) something idiotic?” Or do you justify it because hell, you hate conservatives so much that even though you know they don’t actually, you know, literally eat babies, it just gives you a self righteous shiver to say it? Or are the same discredited leftist tropes so ingrained in your head that you can’t help yourself, like a Tourettes victim? Do you find it a relief, surrendering all thought to leftist Pavlovian Tourettes?
Conservative: “Good morning.”
Keddren: “Raaaaaaaacist homophobe God bothering warmonger! Arf Arf!”
Congratulations, yours is the superior intellect. See you November 3, oh Master of the Universe.
Since I can’t reply to the lunacy above for some reason, I’ll put this here.
If you honestly, seriously can say that the right is more tolerant of gays and atheists than the left, you are out of your goddamn mind.
Kedden,
Tammy Bruce who is gay says she suffered abuse and was ostracized by her former friends after expressing dissent with their political views. She says she has never suffered that kind of treatment from conservatives despite disagreement about politics and them knowing full well her sexual orientation.
Christopher Hitchens, an atheist, had the same experience regarding political dissent. He is dying now and Christian conservatives are praying for his health — and soul, of course. Regardless, conservatives have always given him respect to despite political and theological differences.
As for me, I think homosexuality is mostly a choice and is not something I approve of, but I certainly don’t feel uncomfortable around them, I don’t hate them, I respect and like many of them and I’m more than willing to defend their basic liberty and human dignity.
As for atheists, I have a great deal of respect for doubters and skeptics as I was once one myself. I’ll grant the strident ones can be hard to take, however. OTOH, they never stuck me as being true skeptics either.
Thanks for the refreshing dose of left wing boilerplate bigotry, Keddren. It’s always enlightening to see open and tolerant persons such as yourself respond, in your ever courteous manner, to diverse opinions.
Fire up the ovens, start loading the boxcars!
Huh, comparing the left to nazis are we now? Thanks for displaying the level of rational discourse we’ve come to expect from the batshit insane faction of the right.
I did my own estimation of crowd sizes by looking at the Martin Luther King rally photos on line and compairing them to the Glenn Beck and other rally. The King rally was estimated to be 200,000. The park service no longer gives crowd sizes due to political considerations. The Beck event had 3-5 times more people than the King rally, the comedy rally had less than half of the King rally. Once again the Liberals have no shame in their distortions. If they lie about a crowd of people, what else do they lie about on a daily basis?
This is the best one yet. Add desired outcome to ability to use internet and sopwith inescapably concludes that the Beck rally was 10x as big as the Stewart rally.
Its brilliant! Impervious to reasonable argument, because it contains no reason!
And to lay it out even more ‘simply and directly’, it’s obvious the author knows very well that Stevens changed his name to Islam; he was indulging in some subtle humor. Those of us who caught it chuckled.
Oh, this is all such nonsense. Viacom held a rock/comedy concert. Why are these progressives such staunch defenders of corporate fatcats and giant media conglomerates? CBS is the sister company of Viacom and was once wholly owned by Viacom. No conflict of interest there. None of this matters whatsoever to the reality of democrat Armageddon coming Tuesday.
I did watch a very tiny bit of this event and I saw a young(ish) woman interviewed. Only mildly flower-child, she commented that, “Everyone in the rest of the world loves Obama. I just don’t understand why the tea party people are all over him all the time,” or something very close to that.
1) Despite the fact “the whole rest of the world loves Obama,” (and I might actually doubt that, given things I’ve read from around the world), we’re still getting people trying to kill us, both here and abroad. Anyone notice the recent bombs-on-planes scares? All that “love” ain’t translating into safety for us.
2) Even IF the rest of the world loved Obama, since the rest of the world is NOT invested in the success of the U.S., and in fact mostly seems to feel quite the contrary, that whole-hearted love would NOT bode well for America!
Still, I’m glad they had a good time. I too look forward to a report on the condition of the grounds after their cheerful departure. (I wonder if Comedy Central hired a crew to quickly clean the place so that no one could notice the slovenly nature of those in the young and presumably liberal crowd.)
I am thinking this is just another case of a face in the crowd. John “Lonesome Rhoads” Stewart might want to be careful of who is in the control booth at all times.
Why are we even talking about something that was done just for TV ratings. Good old capitalism at work, with a free market twist!
You know I’ve wondered something about these crowd estimates, perhaps some of my fellow aerial enthusiasts can help me out here.
Since there’s no aircraft over the mall (fair enough) are there rules preventing Model Rockets, Remote Control Air Planes, Remote Control Lighter than Air Vehicles, Balloons, or Kites?
Why?
Well you can easily take strait down aerial shots with any and all of those.
Model Rockets are probably out, what with their uncontrolled nature and of course explosive possibilities.
Model Airplanes? Maybe them too since they’re often gas powered.
Remote Blimps, they’re expensive to get one up high enough to do what we want, but I think it could still work. Though better is to get one of those “SALE!” tie down blimp shaped baloons and mount a camera to that. (I mean that’s probably the least offensive way to pull it off as far as zoning right?)
Finally there’s a good old Box kite (or other lifting kite) with a whole lot of string with a camera on it. I don’t know what the winds are like on the Mall but with those large open areas between the buildings I’d imagine there would be a decent breeze.
So, anyone who knows anything about the Mall and or rally’s in general ever figured out if this is possible?
Gozer, follow the link about APL’s methodology: that’s exactly what they do. They use balloons.
Okay in case the system ate my previous post here is my idea again.
Since we can’t fly an Airplane or a blimp over the Mall, why not something smaller? Like Kites (Already done here: http://dc.about.com/od/specialevents/a/SmithKiteFest.htm ) or giant baloons (Found a quick picture of some at the mall: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-33282025/stock-photo-washington-d-c-july-inflatable-giant-balloons-at-the-mall-for-national-independence-day.html ) or how about remote controlled airplanes or rockets? All of these platforms allow for “On the cheap” aireal photography.
Hell if I lived in the DC area I’d try and start my own crowd counting business just to sell more “proof” photos for those who want the numbers. (Hint hint free money idea guys!)
Okay in case the system ate my previous post here is my idea again.
Since we can’t fly an Airplane or a blimp over the Mall, why not something smaller? Like Kites (Already done here: http://dc.about.com/od/specialevents/a/SmithKiteFest.htm ) or giant baloons (Found a quick picture of some at the mall: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-33282025/stock-photo-washington-d-c-july-inflatable-giant-balloons-at-the-mall-for-national-independence-day.html ) or how about remote controlled airplanes or rockets? All of these platforms allow for “On the cheap” aireal photography.
Hell if I lived in the DC area I’d try and start my own crowd counting business just to sell more “proof” photos for those who want the numbers. (Hint hint free money idea guys!) [Sorry if Multiple posts. Bloody system seems to be eating my posts. Swapped computers to try again]
I suspect that Jon Stewart inadvertently nullified many of Obama’s panic-stricken efforts in recent days to get out the vote in black communities.
Stewart’s smugness, glibness, arrogance, cutesiness and snotty condescension that appeal to ditzy, young, cool kid wannabees have the opposite effect on cynical black people of all ages; a group with which that fraud, Stewart, is incapable of empathizing and a group to which his too cutesy humor doesn’t appeal.
Watch: Stewart’s inept, so called rally turned off black voters who watched it, and that shallow and clueless fool inadvertently suppressed the black vote for sure. Not that fools in the MSM will be savvy enough to pick up on it. To the contrary, they’re swooning over Stewart’s bizarre and inappropriate performance.
You should have said that Stewart’s smugness, cutesiness, glibness, etc., only appeal to WHITE cool kid wannabees. Stewart has NEVER connected with black people, and he is too conceited and too out of touch to understand why. You’re right: That jackass probably has suppressed part of the black vote inadvertently. Imagine that flaming liberal’s chagrin if he ever realizes that, in his ditziness, he is an asset to Republicans. Oh the irony.
Since several have asked, this method of counting crowds is invalid and subjective. It is NOT how any expert Geographer would go about it.
Hire a light plane; take good imagery of the event. You process it and classify the imagery using expert Geography software (ARC or PCI, for example) that is actually capable of accurately determining crowd density per unit area.
This is precisely how Dr. Farouk El-Baz at BU did so for the “Million Man March” – which was not a million at any time (I was a student at BU in that department when this occurred).
I seriously question this corporation that claims to expertly determine such things, when their methodology is barely beyond sheer guesswork.
Hire a light plane; take good imagery of the event. You process it and classify the imagery using expert Geography software (ARC or PCI, for example) that is actually capable of accurately determining crowd density per unit area.
Allston, I’m not sure if anyone has actually mentioned this to you, but since September 2001 it’s not actually allowed to fly a small plane over the Mall.
Your point about “accurate determination of crowd density” is a spurious one, since I don’t attempt to do anything of the sort. Instead, I use a range of crowd density estimates and present the different values resulting.
On the other hand, APL’s crowd density is equivalent to each person occupying, on average, a square 19 inches on a side. That’s literally like a Tokyo rush-hour subway or a tightly-packed elevator, but going on for tens of feet in all directions. I don’t find this plausible.
When you work off faulty assumptions, you get faulty results. I’m hoping you’re at least willing to correct your miscalculation of the area covered. Having been provided more accurate pictures by now.
The Airphotoslive high definition pictures taken – by balloon directly overhead – at the height of the Beck rally show how truly nonsensical Charlie Martin’s convoluted theorizing is. It’s actually quite easy to see how the crowd is dispersed and to count using the grid system from there. Please note the huge empty swath of space in the middle of the south side of the reflecting pool.
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=20e143f6-2e3c-43ce-ad35-7c91a7b25f56
We should have comparable hi-def pictures of the Stewart rally soon enough. In the meantime, I take their word that they took overhead pictures by balloon at the height of the rally and used a grid system to count.
By the way, Charlie’s graphic estimating the area of the Stewart rally is off by a fair amount. His rectangle stops at the far side of the Air and Space Museum, when it is clear from the pictures that the crowd extends at least to, if not beyond, the Natural History Museum.
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2010/10/31/StewartRally5.jpg
http://www.si.edu/visit/infocenter/mallmap.htm
Only on the Internet would someone call multiplication and division “convoluted reasoning.” Okay, I admit I use a square root every so often.
The thing about the APL estimates is this: the method should be more accurate than mine. You mis-state it to some extent, since the photographs they present aren’t actually from directly above; they also have to do their grid counts on oblique photos.
But then we have this problem: their values are always an outlier to every other method, and the differences aren’t small, they’re factors of two and three, and the differences aren’t consistently in one direction or another. This makes me suspicious about the method.
When, as in this case, the method appears to require us to believe that the crowd is packed to the point that each person has less space than a hand towel, it starts to seem very suspicious.
I didn’t say you used “convoluted reasoning,” I said you used convoluted theorizing. Perhaps you can consider the distinction.
I suggest you go back and look at those Photosynth pictures. Any angles are so slight as to be almost nonexistent. And as one is able, via the zoom function, to actually count just about every single individual in the picture, it seems rather silly to insist that calculations based on actual counting are less accurate than working off assumptions, whether it is an assumption about people per square foot or anything else.
But calling those counts “outliers” because they don’t conform to assumption-based-theories or Glenn Beck’s delusions is rich.
Second reply.
To clarify, I am describing the Photosynth pictures of the Beck rally. Airphotoslive will be posting the Stewart pics there shortly.
Aaaand…here they are:
photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=3c6784b6-4e50-4f3a-8fc7-b60cba169384
Do the Democrats retain control of Congress if we determine that the communist rally was bigger than the nazi rally?
Ok, I’ll stipulate there were more communists. No need to vote on Tuesday Democrats, you got it done in D.C.!!!!!
-Tea Nazi
No tea for you!
Vote Democrat, kid. The boomers thank you for the Social Security.
And who do you think, btw, is the one getting stuck with paying off that $14 trillion debt?
A more detailed explanation of Airphotoslive system here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20015214-503544.html
Media reports and comparisons, 102 unshaven, unwashed, smelly homeless but racist people showed up for the lunatic Glen Becks’s rally; 947,392 highly educated, courteous, quiet & well behaved, involved & compassionate people from the inevitable all works of life, and of all colors came to see and hear the sophisticated and witty Stewart and Colbert.
Some were even heard to say when leaving that they think they may have understood something that Stewart was trying to say in his closing speech.
First, here’s a photo comparison that says it all: Beck’s Restoring Honor Crowd vs. Stewart’s Restoring Sanity Crowd – Photo Comparison
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/10/beck-crowd-versus-stewart-crowd-photo-comparison/?utm_source=web&utm_medium=twitter
And since it has been brought up, here’s the (absence of) credibility of CBS http://bit.ly/daWbwp
That photo is full of flaws. For example why is the area east of the ww memorial included in their oval when it’s not in the picture? Addtionally, the google maps image of the reflecting pool is stretched to make it appear bigger. Take a close look against maps.google.com zipcode 20008. It’s pretty blatant.
I was seriously thinking of attending the Stewart/Colbert rally, thus doubling its size, but decided to have a novocain-free root canal instead… much less painful.
TAKE A MOMENT AND PLEASE WATCH:
“TWO INCREDIBLY INSPIRATIONAL VIDEOS ON WHICH TO REFLECT AS YOU PREPARE TO VOTE NOVEMBER 2nd”
http://heir2freedom.blogspot.com/2010/10/two-incredibly-inspirational-videos-on.html
This method of attracting people to a rally using entertainment, then marveling at the size of the crowd was a trick President ME used when he was just running for president. Even here in anarchist/socialist wonderland, Portland Oregon, Obama threw a ‘rally’ down on the Willamette riverfront. But before he spoke they had some popular music group to attract the crowd. The crowd was quite large, 75,000, I think. The band, the Decemberists. The group typically begin their concerts with a Russian-language recording of the USSR’s national anthem. Of course, this was when people only suspected Obama was a marxist. But as for the Sanity/Fear rally goes, it is funny for an entertainment concert to garner so much press right off their talking points. Afterall, it was a concert, wasn’t it?
Yeah, that indie band must have been the draw. Never mind that they typically played 1,000 seat clubs at the time. Folks were probably thrilled to come stand in the sun for three or four hours just to avoid that cover charge for uhm, about 20 minutes worth of music.
Of course once everybody got their free music fix they left rather than listen to a boring political speech. Oh that’s right, they didn’t.
And by the way, they play the Soviet National Anthem only occasionally, as a joke. You do realize they take their name from the 1825 December revolution, don’t you?
It should be noted that a friend who walked in from Silver Spring (they just HAD to hold it on Shabbos, making it difficult/impossible for religious Jews to attend without either staying in a hotel, or walking 10 miles from the Jewish areas north of the District) was unable to get within several blocks of the Mall, due to crowding on all the side streets. Do the crowd size estimates include those who tried to go, but couldn’t get close enough to see?
No, but then the same complaints came up for the 8/28 rally and for the 9/12 rally last year. You’re absolutely right: we can’t count people who didn’t get there.
So how long before you throw Obama and his left wing ideology out of the Presidency? Those numbers will tell us how the left are travelling.
I suggest Charlie swap out that first photo for one that’s a little more accurate. Like, oh, maybe this:
http://ddis.smugmug.com/Clients-zone/RallySanityandRallyHonor/13530515_gguiC#1071836547_4J7Ta-A-LB
And then he can keep his eye on the Photosynth site to see when the hi-def pics go up:
http://photosynth.net/userprofilepage.aspx?user=curtw
That is, if he’s really interested in accuracy and not advocacy.
The photo you provided is the same photo Charlie Martin used, but a bit lower. The back of the photo clearly shows low density, so even if we accounted for all those people, if we pushed the people up to the front to make it as dense as the rest of the rally, it would still take up as much space as Charlie Martin claims. I applaud the fact that you are the first person to actually provide a photo to counter this one, and not just call BS without giving any counter photo. The fact is, though, that Glenn Beck’s rally was just as dense as Stewart’s (okay, maybe a bit less dense), meaning that if the 8/28 rally took up more space, then chances are there were more people.
And if AirPhotosLive.com is soooo credible, then why doesn’t any other news source use them? Only CBS uses them, and both estimates are wild outliers. And since I have never heard of them before CBS using them, it is very unlikely they are a very credible source. I trust my eyeballs more, and the 8/28 rally took up nearly twice as much space as the 10/30 rally, so the 8/28 rally is obviously the larger rally.
Actually, the photo I provided is quite different from the one Charlie Martin used. Please go look again. For comparison, you will see that Charlie’s photo shows the crowd abruptly ending just past the Air and Space Museum, while the Airphotoslive photo clearly shows that the crowd went at least as far as the Smithsonian Castle/Information Center. Map here:
si.edu/visit/infocenter/mallmap.htm
I think you have it backwards as far as “pushing up people” to account for density. Look again at the Photosynth picture of the Beck rally I linked to above. See the entire middle lower section comparatively devoid of people? See how sparse the crowd is in several other areas? How would you redistribute those folks to get anything like a uniform density?
No compare those photos to Airphotoslive aerial shots of the Sanity rally that have just been posted at Photosynth:
photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=3c6784b6-4e50-4f3a-8fc7-b60cba169384
Notice the uniform density – people standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder – all the way up to the Hirschorn Museum? Notice the overflow crowd standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder on 7th Street?
And I suggest you use Google Maps to compare the two spaces. Be sure to subtract the large area occupied by the Reflecting Pool.
So yes, I encourage you to believe your eyeballs. Not somebody’s personal theory.
As to your question about Airphotoslive, perhaps you aren’t aware that they were under exclusive contract to CBS News, though of course many other news sites have relied on their estimate. You provide no proof whatsoever that the Airphotoslive estimates are “wild outliers” in either case. The best that Charlie Martin could come up with respect to the Beck rally was an off-duty NBC reporter’s tweet about the opinion of an anonymous source. Thanks, but I’ll believe my eyeballs.
And if AirPhotosLive.com is soooo credible, then why doesn’t any other news source use them? Only CBS uses them, and both estimates are wild outliers. And since I have never heard of them before CBS using them, it is very unlikely they are a very credible source. I trust my eyeballs more, and the 8/28 rally took up nearly twice as much space as the 10/30 rally, so the 8/28 rally is obviously the larger rally.
I accidentally included AsianTeaPartyMember’s last paragraph as the last paragraph of my comment. Mine ended with, “Thanks, but I’ll believe my eyeballs.”
The density for Glenn Beck’s rally is more or less uniform. There are some spacing in the green field to the left and wild spacing in the back (which was actually cut off from the photo). The photograph you showed me has the packed crowd occupying the same amount of space as what Charlie Martin has estimated. Thus, your little photo still doesn’t disprove his estimates. There were some people toward the back on the walkways. Why they weren’t more bunched together is beyond me, but he even accounted for those people by including the buildings surrounding the rally (a normal rectangle is much easier to calculate the area than a rectangle with some parts jutting out)
And if AirPhotosLive.Com is a part of CBS, then I fail to see how it is trustworthy. It will obviously have it’s employer’s interests at heart. And that’s supported by the fact that they say 87,000 people attended, which is about 2.5 times less than the next lowest estimate, and their number of how many attended Jon Stewart’s rally (forgot the actual numbers but they were huge) is almost twice as high as the next estimate. Those kind of outliers
really make me question their methodology. The photo you’ve given us shows the crowd taking up just as much space as Charlie Martin shown in his little map to get his estimate, and it turns out that Glenn Beck’s rally took up nearly twice as much space. Show me a photo that disproves, not reinforces, my arguement.
As I’ve said on this thread, you are welcome to count the actual numbers of people in the crowd. The data is there. I can’t force you to use it.
Airphotoslive is not a part of CBS. As far as trying to “please” anyone, I note that when they provided the crowd estimate of Obama’s inauguration for CNN, they came in at 800,000 which of course was less than the one million claimed by more partisan sources.
With respect to your claims that their estimates are over/under anyone else’s, please provide links to actual, formal crowd estimates provided by reputable news organizations, that are based on scientific methodolgy.
As to your claim that the photos show the crowd taking up the same amount of space as that shown in Charlie Martin’s graphic, I’m sorry but that is demonstrably false. No one can force you to look at information with unbiased eyes, but it can certainly be pointed out where you’re wrong.
I’m a conservative who was at the Beck rally and also Sanity. While I respect your positions here, your assumption that the crowd density was anywhere remotely similar is just totally wrong. Not even close. We were packed, front-to-back, shoulder to shoulder, in the ENTIRE area of that picture.
All things considered Jon Stewart couldn’t afford to be “seen” to fail. He’d look a right prat. It’d embarrass him and Comedy Central which would have a flow on effect on advertising revenue. Jon’s rally is less a political statement than a marketing exercise. Though nutty, Beck looks more sincere by comparison.
To my mind, the expensive entertainment made Jon Stewart and his supporters look desperate.
Just saying.
As far as the crowd density goes it was cooler ouy saturday than beck’s rally. besides we know these folks like to snuggle up.
Of course the crowd at Stewart and Colbert’s rally was more dense. There were obviously fewer people there than at Beck’s rally but the people that were there were definitely more dense.
Mr. Martin;
Heya, I’m not even going to get into the size of this soiree, because it simply isn’t relevant.
This was an outdoor stand-up comedy and music festival.
Beck’s gig was totally political and moral, as was the “One America” rally, and the Restore Honor rally beat the ever-lovin’ daylights out of the Soros effort.
This is why this hootenanny was held and pumped up with vaudeville…to give the moonbat cattle something to point at and reassure their herd-mind that they indeed ARE a big herd.
So that out of the way, it occurs to me that you might have a way of testing your aerial photograph methodology where you have a pretty precise idea of the size of the crowd.
I know Red Rocks Amphiteater is in Colorado, and I imagine that you have a few other outddor music venues…ones that charge admission, and therefore keep track of the gate.
I imagine that a friendly management might let you, for the price of a ticket, get a few tethered balloon shots, run you engine, and then share the size of the crowd from his ticket count with you.
(One imagines that the Martin household is a tad peculiar for a few days after one of these hoe-downs…OTOH, Mrs. Martin might welcome the break while ole Charlie buries himself in the photos and the numbers for a spell)
Bilgeman, here’s a pop quiz: who wrote:
That idea for testing the method is an interesting one, though, I’ll look into it.
It should be noted that a friend who walked in from Silver Spring was unable to get within several blocks of the Mall, due to crowding on all the side streets. Do the crowd size estimates include those who tried to go, but couldn’t get close enough to see?
I’ve also seen several comments elsewhere from people who said many folks who couldn’t see or hear anything left early – about 1:30 – but as they left they say two or three times as many people just arriving.
Thanbo — oddly, someone with exactly the same name asked the same question up as thread #72.
The purpose of the rally is to bump up registered Democrat enthusiasm. All summer we read about the “enthusiasm gap.” All summer we read that “voter turn-out is key.” Yesterday was a nice day in October. People like to do something on a Saturday. And DC is a great venue to collect people from a lot of nearby States, such as Ohio, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and many others. Without the excitement of meeting somewhere en mass, a lot of these people might have skipped voting next Tuesday. I see this “Rally About Nothing” as a well-executed strategy to motivate Democrats. The Democrats stand to lose a lot of power and access next Tuesday, and the money spent on this get-out-the-vote rally was well invested.
Why else would Oprah and Huffington be involved? Why would transport be paid for? Why would smart guys like Stewart and Colbert not articulate the purpose of the rally? I’d have to say this was a success for the Left. Nice to have two or three billionaires on your team.
So far as content was concerned, Jon Stewart could have sat in a chair and read–ala Andy Kaufman–Great Gatsby in its entirety, and the goal would have been likewise achieved: get out the vote, get people involved, not just reading blogs and watching clips. Ramp up the enthusiasm (Stewart announced the rally on September 16); roll out the campaign. Nicely done, if I’m correct.
The purpose of the rally is to bump up registered Democrat enthusiasm. All summer we read about the “enthusiasm gap.” All summer we read that “voter turn-out is key.” Yesterday was a nice day in October. People like to do something on a Saturday. And DC is a great venue to collect people from a lot of nearby States, such as Ohio, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and many others. Without the excitement of meeting somewhere en mass, a lot of these people might have skipped voting next Tuesday. I see this “Rally About Nothing” as a well-executed strategy to motivate Democrats. The Democrats stand to lose a lot of power and access next Tuesday, and the money spent on this get-out-the-vote rally was well invested.
Why else would Oprah and Huffington be involved? Why would transport be paid for? Why would smart guys like Stewart and Colbert not articulate the purpose of the rally? I’d have to say this was a success for the Left. Nice to have two or three billionaires on your team.
So far as content was concerned, Jon Stewart could have sat in a chair and–ala Andy Kaufman–read aloud The Great Gatsby, and the goal would have been likewise achieved: get out the vote, get people involved, not just reading blogs and watching clips. Ramp up the enthusiasm (Stewart announced the rally on September 16); roll out the campaign. Nicely done, if I’m correct.
So what? We had comedy gold Woodstock, replete with weed, ugly women, and half songs.
Come Wednesday, the only “music” you’ll be hearing from the Comedy Central groupies is the weeping and gnashing of teeth, with the realization Barack Obama and his toadies have been weighed in the scales and found wanting.
In the interest of fairness and social justice the estimates do include those who
couldn’t get close, those who wanted to be there but had prior engagements and 1800 young people who had medical excuses and spent the day at home recuperating.Thanks for reminding us.
It is ridiculous that the two are even being compared. I am an Independant, and I was at the Stewart’s rally. However, I went purely for entertainment because that was exactly what it was meant to be, and thus it should not be compared to the Beck rally at all. Someone using their talent and entertainment to get something they want to say heard is not the same as someone holding a political rally with an agenda. Anyone who thinks of the Stewart rally with seriousness is of the mindset that is exactly what this mock rally was, well…mocking. It would be insanity to think of them as the same.
As I said before, I was not there for any political purpose so what I am about to say is not biased or based on that, and I do not hate Glenn Beck. I can say that the pictures I have seen posted online — even the ones posted by the company that estimated the crowd total — did not show the true size of the crowd at its peak. At its peak, it extended to 14th St. and a majority of that was shoulder to shoulder. Also, people had even broken through the partitioned off areas and were roaming the streets around the mall because they could not get in.
Now, I’m not saying it was bigger than Beck’s because to me it doesn’t compare fairly. But logically, I would only assume that the Stewart rally was bigger just based on the points that others have already stated. It was a free entertainment event put on by two very popular comedians where many people obtained free transport to…and then there were also people there who really thought it was a true rally…so why wouldn’t the crowd be bigger? It had two audiences attending.
But again…why does it even matter when it wasn’t a true rally? Even Jon has said himself that he is only a comedian. It is everyone else who is starting to confuse him with a real political voice just because of his popularity. Sure there was an underlying message that he I’m sure truly believes in (just as everyone has their own opinions), but that is still no different than a poet or a song writer using their talents to get out their ideas…but I doubt many would say they were people with a serious political agenda.
I think it was meant to entertain first…and whatever else it did or didn’t accomplish was secondary…
I was at the Rally to Restore Sanity with some friends. Being technically oriented types, we were trying to figure out the crowd density of the area we were in, which was about 1/3 of the way back from the “special guests” area. We came up with a figure of 3 people per 10 sq feet for most of the block we were in, and we were not in the most densely packed areas. People seemed to be more densely packed closer to the jumbotron screens, and we were estimating 4 people per 10 square feet in some places. And, yes, we were joking about how much easier it would be to simply pass people overhead who needed to get out from the center rather than trying to make pathways for them out to the portasans. I’ve seen less crowded mosh pits.
The automatic assumption of some posters that everyone in attendance was some kind of young, non-productive amoral stoner is … odd. I know the media tends to focus on the flamboyantly dressed, but any quick perusal of the photos shows many perfectly ordinary people. We are middle-aged, middle class, responsible parents of children who have already grown up to be responsible adults. We were in no hurry to leave the area, and so after about fifteen minutes of standing in place while people filed out around us, when we finally had room to set up the chairs we brought, we sat and watched the rest of the crowd leave. Everyone we saw was orderly, polite, and there was no litter on the ground when the grass finally became visible. I was impressed with the overall friendliness, helpfulness and good will of the crowd.
I’m glad I spent the day with sincere satirists who are not afraid to hold a mirror up to everyone, including themselves, to point out the follies of not trying to find common ground to build a better America on.
I saw mostly college kids. I don’t disbelieve you, but the majority of attendes were a young crowd. Also, the later, post-rally crowds that swelled the Metro ridership was almost exclusively young.
The other point you make about ‘We are middle-aged, middle class, responsible parents of children who have already grown up to be responsible adults,’ is interesting since the Tea Party rallies have also been portrayed in a distorted manner, and, additionally, the general media seemed to be spectacularly reluctant to cite any halfway solid attendance numbers for Beck and Tea Party rallies, but for the Sanity rally they were able to be more precise. What’s up with that?
Finally I have to ask: why did you show up for a rally staged by a TV network and featuring comedians as the headliners and organizers? Do you expect to me taken seriously for having done so?
“to be taken seriously for having done so?”
I’m not even sure what you mean by “taken seriously”? I was there in support, not of any particular political stance or party or group, but to promote cooperation, tolerance and, er, sanity between and amongst different points of view and different types of Americans – white, black, gay, straight, liberal, conservative, tea party, religious, atheist, whatever. I think we are all pretty nice people who want what is “best” for America. If our definitions of “best” differ a bit, demonizing the other guy is no way to find a common ground that everyone can live with. I fully agree with Stewart that the problem is the increasing polarization of differences. That *will* ruin what is best about these United States. This is still a melting pot.
If someone notices that multiple thousands of people took the time to be there and agree that we all need to calm down and be reasonable, that’s enough for me. Perhaps someone will be nicer to someone who disagrees with their viewpoint.
And, for the record, the 250 people on the five busses from Ann Arbor, Michigan who came with me didn’t need to take the Metro, so our numbers wouldn’t even be in the Metro counts. And for those doubting Thomases who don’t think we were standing shoulder to shoulder, I took this pic by lifting up my hand and shooting over my head. And this was not the most tightly packed area. This was the area we estimated at 3 people per 10 sq feet in the middle of the second block back from the stage about 10 yards in from the street.
http://www.expo-conv-svcs.com/RallyCrowd.jpg
and my sign read “Volume ≠ Truth” on one side and “Frodo Lives” on the other. My husband’s sign said “Vote Sane.” We stood with the signs and the chairs between our legs because there was no room for them otherwise.
Metro statistics published earlier put ridership numbers on Saturday at well over eight hundred thousand. In comparison, on the day of the Beck rally, ridership was just over five hundred thousand.
See my post below in reply to #89 sensei about the Metro numbers.
Remember also that it was a Halloween weekend with lots of young revelers.
The Beck people used the Metro twice. The Sanity ralliers used the Metro repeatedly, and not just for the rally.
The Beck ralliers were there for a serious purpose. The “Sanity” ralliers were not.
The Beck ralliers were regular folks with busy lives to go back to. The Sanity ralliers were unserious college kids who can travel at the drop of a hat.
The Sanity rally was a commercial venture by ‘Comedy Central’ for its own benefit, and therefore not a sincere outpouring of genuine sentiment.
I’d like to see the evidence to support any of those claims. Assumptions are not facts, you know.
Many, many of the Sanity ralliers were also people with homes and lives to go back to. Even college students have schedules. Two students on my bus, which was for the most part filled with middle-aged, middle class ralliers, read texts and wrote papers on the drive. I deliberately took a weekend and spent my own money to go there to be counted among the people for Sanity (and/or Fear). It seemed like the right thing to do. I talked to people from Maryland, New Mexico, Texas… and those were just the ones standing near me. And I’m from Michigan.
There is little tolerance today. The spate of attack ads for this election is sickening. I would love to be able to say that tomorrow I am not voting for anyone who substituted personal attacks on their opponents for giving the voters detailed views on what they would do if elected but that would mean I’d have to not vote. And I always vote. I’m tired of being treated as if my attention span was equal to a dog who sees a squirrel and forgets everything else.
Sanity and compromise and working together towards a goal – that’s what we have too little of today. Letting everyone see that there is a significant group of people who would like more calmness, rationality, sanity *and compromise* in politics and the media is what the Sanity Rally was about. I had hoped for that when I went and it was better than I expected. Thank you, Jon Stewart.
You realize that you won’t be voting Democrat if you won’t vote for candidates who ran personal attack ads.
Mr. Martin,
How do you reconcile your estimates with Metro ridership data that show 350,000 more trips taken on the Stewart/Colbert rally day than the Beck rally day?
According to Metro, there were 825,437 on Stewart/Colbert day and 510,020 on Beck day. Average Saturday ridership is about 350,000 (both events were on Saturday).
If you exclude the average daily riders, and assume two trips per person (one there, one back), that yields 80,010 for Beck and 237,718 for Stewart/Colbert.
This method corresponds to APL’s analysis of 87,000 for Beck and 215,000 for Stewart/Colbert. I’ve seen no reports that the Beck ralliers disproportionately traveled by foot (it would be hard to miss 413,000 people walking across Memorial Bridge) or some other method. At a minimum, from the data we can conclude that Stewart/Colbert drew three times as many as Beck.
Kind regards
http://www.wmata.com/rail/disruption_reports/viewPage_update.cfm?ReportID=1919
http://wmata.com/about_metro/news/PressReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=4717
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/metro-says-stewart-beat-beck-at-the-faregates-20101031
88. Jon:
See my reply posts above and below yours. I was on the Metro that day. I observed first hand that the Sanity ralliers were using Metro repeatedly, and not just to go to and from the rally. Hence, the greater numbers. This was an all-day multi-location event for college kids. The Beck folks were in and then back out to the heartland to go back to their jobs and lives.
I have learned from much experience to parse and take apart simplistic and misleading statistics.
Well, frankly, I don’t think I have to. We’ve done the Metro ridership thing before, and it’s not turned out to correlate with anything very highly. But in any case, you’re attempting to use a very indirect measure — ridership for the whole Metro system — to refute an estimate based on direct observation.
I also noticed that back for the 9/12 2009 rally, when Metro ridership was actually very high, that didn’t seem to carry much weight with the people whose estimates were low.
As I’ve said above, the estimates and methodology are all out in the open; use your own reason and think for yourself. If you really think the crwd was packed in so tightly that people were standing, on average on a 19 inch square, then 215,000 is believable.
Charlie,
Thanks for your reply.
I’d respectfully diasgree with you that Metro ridership does not “correlate with anything very highly.” For the 9/12/09 rally, as you mention, there were 437,624 trips — the other 3 Saturdays that month averaged 331,567, leaving 106,057 trips on 9/12 anolmalous to a typical Saturday. Assume two trips/person that yields an estimate of 53,028 people who used Metro rail to get to/from the rally.
Professor Farouk El-Baz, Director of Boston University’s Center for Remtoe Sensing, indicated 75,000 as the peak number for 9/12. You may recall Professor El-Baz’s team also calculated the Million Man March at 837,214 (Metro ridership that day was 804,146). His calculation for 9/12 used photographic analysis, so will obviously include non-rail users. The ridership data thus shows a strong correlation to attendance.
Your point about the data being system-wide is unpersuasive. When you exclude average daily ridership (i.e., the non-event related trips), it naturally focuses on trips that are anomalous to a particular day (i.e. trips related to the event).
Finally, as to your polygon estimating, I think it is pretty clear from the photos that your polygon is too small. The Stewart rally was still standing room only past 7th Street, where your polygon ends.
Ridership data – like any method – does not offer a precise and actual count. But it is objective and unbiased. People have to get to the event somehow. And Metro will always play a large part of that. Thus, it offers a reasonable and objective baseline to compare attendance — regardless of the political leanings of the attendees.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep/15/nation/na-crowd15
http://www.bu.edu/remotesensing/research/completed/million-man-march/
http://www.wmata.com/rail/disruption_reports/viewReportArchive.cfm?Archive_Date=92009
http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/news/PressReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=3696&from=rss
I just finished saying, repeatedly, that Sanity rally attendees were making multiple trips on Saturday, not just to the rally, but to then onto drinking spots around NW DC, from Georgetown to Capitol Hill, so they were making multiple trips. The Beck and Tea Party folks did not do the same, and therefore would have lower overall ridership numbers.
Don, you have no way of knowing wat 87,000 people may or may not have done. Your assertions to the contrary are ridiculous.
Why is everybody but you saying the Sanity rally outdrew Beck? I don’t get it? Could it be that everybody is out to get you folks? That must be it.
I’ve heard two news items that are interesting:
1) The “Sanity” crowd was 150K or 200K (the last number was from NPR, which is suspect)
2) Metro said it had a record ridership day for a Saturday
So, this means a record-size, or at least very large, rally, right?
Well, not quite.
Fro #1: I find it curious how precise and decisive the general media was in reporting the Sanity rally numbers, as compared to the vaguely-worded all-over-the-map phrasing for the various Beck and Tea Party rallies. Also, the Sanity rally was a gathering of college students, a notoriously mobile and condensed constituency that, unlike Tea Partiers and the like, can get up and travel at the drop of a hat. Offer lots of music and stuff, and have the likes of Ariana Hauffington pay for 10,000 of you to come down from NYC, and sure, you’ll get big numbers. When Obama did his Berlin speech, the crowd was large for two reasons: 1) the novelty of Obama, and 2) the free Beer and Bratwurst. Again, a great big crowd of freeloading eurokids.
For #2: I was in DC at the time the rally was breakig up, and left for the suburbs late in the evening. Here’s what I observed: the ralliers were on the Metro repeatedly, all day, NOT just too and from the rally. Again, these were colege kids who were there not only for the unserious, fun rally, but also to scatter to various bars and eateries afterwards, and also for the Georgetown Halloween thing. Tea Partiers didn’t hang around after their rallies to drink and carouse, because they had full lives to go back to and they had to get their kids home in many cases.
Oh, and one more thing: The Sanity Rally was a giant commercial venture by ‘Comedy Central’, and was therefore a totally fabricated fraud engineered by a commercial entity for its own benefit. All those “ralliers” were not there for a serious purpose.
You should probably drop your laughable “this was only college students” argument before you look any more foolish. Photos from the event are already disproving this falsehood.
Don Rodrigo, your crowd estimates are based on your (sole?) anecdotal opinion that the Stewart rally was college kids using the metro repeatedly. Can you base that on any objective data?
Even subjectively, did you personally see *the same people* using the metro again and again? In 20 years, I’ve never seen the same person on the metro more than once a day.
As for age – where you even there? Check the photos from AP that are linked to at the top of this article. Hardly college age. Especially towards the back where there were tons of families with children, not your typical college crowd.
Well, I guess if “everybody” says the “Sanity” was bigger, it was. Guess I’ll have to vote Democrat.
This is only true if “everyone but me” is interpreted as “CBS alone.” Lots of other people are giving estimates in the 150K to 200K area, which I think is plausible, and fits with my figures. (You did actually read to the end of the article, right? You actually looked at the figures?)
The real issue is with the old 87K estimate for Beck, which no one but CBS reported; NBC and the NY Times reported something like 300K.
“NBC and the NY Times reported something like 300K.”
First of all, the NY Times was merely referring to the NBC “estimate.” Oh, and Glenn Beck’s pronouncement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/us/politics/29beck.html
As to the NBC “estimate,” well, I have been unable to find a single primary source showing NBC made any such formal pronouncement. The closest I’ve come is this tweet by an off-duty NBC reporter saying some anonymous official told him informally that he thought there were 300-385,000 people there:
http://twitter.com/DomenicoNBC/status/22364380399
If you can come up with a primary source on either of these “estimates” I’d be interested in seeing it.
So your argument seems to be that the Airphotoslive count, which was based on actual you know, counting, is less reliable than … what, second-hand tweets of someone’s anonymous opinion?
Apparently, the vast majority of the media (even the liberal MSM) felt the “anonymous second hand tweet” was more reliable than the “proven, scientific company”, because the vast majority of the media reproduced the “over 200,000″ claim, whereas only blogs seem to reproduce the 87,000 number printed out by AirPhotosLive.com. Considering how nobody has ever heard of it, and their explanation of their methodology is shown not on the 8/28 rally, but a random tea party gathering makes me doubt the methodology even more. And finally, when they came out with the Restoring Sanity numbers, their numbers were nearly twice as high as the rest. Either everyone else is wrong or they are wrong. Take your pick.
The “vast majority”? Proof please. All I’ve ever seen are mentions like “NBC News estimated the crowd at 300,000″ – not exactly a reliance – usually right along with mentions of Glenn Beck’s/Micehlle Bachman’s etc. “It was eleventy billion!” estimate and the Airphotoslive/CBS News estimate. That’s because reputable news organizations (not just blogs) tended to point out that estimates varied.
“Nobody’s ever heard of it”? You mean you’ve never heard of it. As they’ve been working with news organizations like CBS, CNN, and the Washington Post, not to mention corporations like Verizon, AT&T, and Forbes who contract for the aerial image services, I’d say the people who work in the field know about them.
http://airphotoslive.com/clients.html
Add to that the fact that they provide crowd information to first responders and emergency medical personnel at these rallies, I’m pretty sure that their services are respected.
http://photosynth.net/userProfilePage.aspx?user=curtw&content=Replies
They’ve explained their methodology many times over. No reputable source disputes that they use the methodology they say they use. If you want to disagree, maybe try picking a more rational reason than you don’t like the example they provided in a news article.
As to your last claim re the Stewart rally, I’ll repeat what I posted above: please provide estimates given formally by reputable news sources, based on scientific methodology, that show numbers that are half of those given by Airphotoslive. Be specific.
No matter how you sum it up, the nation is turning liberal. All of the statistics point to it as they were exactly the same for the republicans in Reagens midterm election. Gallup polls show Obama’s and Reagen’s approval record as almost exactly the same by comparison. (Obama’s is slightly higher)The nation is slowly but surely moving away from conservatism because we need fresh ideas and conservatives are not associated with imagination. Thats why you hear the term “liberal arts” but not “conservative arts” The nations pendulum is swingin towards liberal guys, deal with it.
You need to do a little research on the word “Liberal”, dude.
I know BS when I CBS.
Are you including the reflecting pool in your geographic area for the Glenn Beck crowd estimates?
Hello. I am 56 years old and Black. I attended the rally to Restore Sanity. I did not know there would be performers or music – I knew there would be comedy – but the political message delivered by Jon Stewart is the reason I wnet and took my family with me. I am handicapped, and it was not easy to get there.
Next to me was a family (4) from Chicago, a mother from New Hampshire, and her son from Massachusetts. Also a disabled Viet Nam vet (Marine) from Idaho.
On the Metro (which I rode at 10 am, and then at 5 pm) there were people from Kentucky, Minneapolis, and North Carolina and Florida.
I drove 4 hours to go to Washington, AND paid for a hotel room. No one paid me or gave me anything to go. Tha family from Chicago paid for hotel and airline tickets.
It took 8 subway trains before I could get on from the Grosveenor stations, and 16 before I could leave from the Smithsonian. 7 more from Metro station.
I went to this rally to see if there were more people like me, normal, average, politically aware voters/ And yes, I saw them all around the mall.
PS I picked up my own trash, and every half hour on the hour volunteers wearing blue t shirts went around with a trash bag AND a recycle bag.
If you weren’t there, don’t bother commenting.
STFU, Ann. You’re obviously a lying lib who was never really there at all. Liberals don’t work. Liberals don’t make an effort to support what they believe in. Glenn Beck’s crowd, whatever it was, was 10 times bigger than Stewarts’s crowd. 100 maybe. Some university, I forget which one, said there were 1.5 million people at Beck’s rally. And the estimates I hear for Stewart’s rally were 856. Nine hundred if you count the Black Panthers who were beating people over in the corner. So crawl back under your rock before I stomp you in the head.
Bitchin’s parody, sensei! A little something extra in the Soros pay packet this week for your effort!
The above 2 posts are nonsense. The first post is a transparent attempt to dishonestly manufacture the narrative that people who oppose the extremist policies of the Democrats and President Obama are those scary “other” people who should be feared while normal people are leftists like Stewart and Colbert. And on queue we get the strawman “angry white guy” spewing insults straight out of the lefts stereotype of conservatives.
I guess the desperation of the left these days is to be expected, but anyone who is buying this planted garbage is a fool.
One other note. The Washington area is the epicenter of the leftist mindset in this country. For the majority in that city, they are literally dependent on keeping the size of Government large. Socialism is their path to prosperity – even if they are too short sited to understand that it would be very temporary. The fact is that the Beck rally had to drew people from across this country to put up those huge numbers, while all Stewart had to do was draw in the locals who agree with him. And yet, this analysis is pretty compelling that Beck had a bigger crowd.
We will see tomorrow….
“STFU, Ann. You’re obviously a lying lib who was never really there at all.”
Wow. Angry much?
I was in the Americans with Disabiliites Section on 4th Street. I watched two park officers on horses around 1 pm. I saw a man takem ill carried away on a backboard on a police golf cart around 3 pm. I saw the DC police haul a guy out of a tree who was carving his initials into the tree. But I guess it doesn’t matter what i saw, because obviously I was not there. You, sir, are the fool.
My sore knee still reminds me of being there.
Planted garbage? No. Just the truth. So suck om it.
Ann, I think he was being sarcastic.
Charlie Martin,
I think it’s important to remember that Stewart’s rally was more or less non-political. Bearing that in mind, it was nice to attend a rally was welcoming to ALL Americans and not just white Americans.
The astro-turf crowd is working this nonsense narrative hard. I really like the subtle attempt to smear the Beck rally attendees as not real Americans via the posting name. It’s right up there with Obama calling half of the country “enemies” and right up there with smearing the Beck rally as gathering of the “insane”.
Anyone who thinks this was a non-political rally is a fool. Stewart, Colbert, and the astro-turfers on this thread are pushing a story that they are non-partisan and their agenda is just what all normal decent people think. It ain’t working.
Beck claimed his rally was non-poitical. Was it?
You guys make me sick. You are like a bunch of 4 year olds. Grow up and act like adults.
here is a satellite photo of the event
http://geoeyemediaportal.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/images/gallery/ge1/hires/national_mall_washington_dc_10_30_10.jpg
as you can see, Charlie martin was right. This is now undeniable proof that Glenn Beck had a larger rally. Now, the debate is over.
Here’s the problem with your argument:
The GeoEye satellite picture was taken at 12:25 PM EDT, just 25 minutes after the event began and while thousands of people were still arriving. Note, for example, the numerous people on the sidewalks leading up to the grassy areas?
http://webmastergeoeye.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/sanity-rally-seen-by-2-million-tv-viewers-geoeye-high-resolution-imagery-featured-in-abc-article/
Now look at the pictures taken 1.5 hours later, between 2:00 and 2:04. They show people still arriving, but the areas of grass in front of the Hirschorn stretching all the way down to the Smithsonian Castle.Museum of Natural History have a good number of people on them. (The back grassy areas were blocked off for reseeding.) Far more than the sparsely populated swaths shown in the Beck tally photos, in fact.
http://ddis.smugmug.com/Clients-zone/RallySanityandRallyHonor/13530515_gguiC#1071838386_RvAg9-A-LB
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=3c6784b6-4e50-4f3a-8fc7-b60cba169384
Given all the anecdotal evidence of people leaving while more were still arriving late in the rally, we may never know the exact numbers. But it is clear that Charlie Martin is not relying on the most accurate information.
When I enlarged the photo of the October 30 rally, it appears to show significant digital artifacts, such as would be seen in an altered image, in the area where the crowd supposedly ended. Since other eye-witness reports indicate that the densely packed crowd extended all the way to the Washington monument, these calculations are highly suspect, at best.
That said, I’m still waiting to see definitive, time-stamped aerial images of the entire mall from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Until we have these, the AirPhotosLive.com analysis is the best we have, and is not inconsistent with DC Metro traffic figures for the dates of the two rallies:
August 28 Metrorail trips: 510,020
October 30 Metrorail trips: 825,437
(Average Saturday Metrorail ridership is typically about 350,000)
Bill Lawrence @
“IOW, it’s on the internet so it must be true
”
IOW, they’re pictures.
————
“I’ll start considering AirPhotosLive claims when they release all the raw data for analysis by third parties.”
They have. You are free to count the people in the crowd yourself. I’d say that’s as raw as the data can get.