While the official Tea Party estimates of Saturday’s rally attendance may range between a gajillion and the fafillion, the company CBS hired to give an estimate placed the turnout at a respectably large 87,000, larger than the official estimates of turnout last year’s 9/12 rally but no where near the estimated 1.8 million that attended Obama’s inauguration.
The number of people who showed up for Beck’s rally was also considerably smaller than the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom, at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have A Dream” speech and which Beck self-consciously styled his “restoring honor” event after, to the irritation of many liberals. The 1963 march drew around 200,000 people, according to contemporary estimates. The crowd then was considerably more diverse, had a leftist economic agenda and was organized by admitted socialists who palled around with a number of other lefty types who likely would have ended up on Glenn Beck’s chalkboard back in the day. That crowd also was produced without the kind of financial support provided by Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity, and at a time when long-distance communication tools were considerably more limited.
[…]
All of which begs the question of why liberals wrung their hands so publicly over Beck’s spectacle, as though this even might actually dwarf the 1963 March on Washington in terms of historical and political significance. At this point, it’s obvious that Beck’s stunts have a self-conscious hint of irony to them. His increasingly messianic self-conception and his outsize comparisons between himself and important American historical figures seem deliberately designed to make liberals issue angry public denunciations, which only increase his profile and solidify his stature in the conservative movement, where Pissing Off Liberals is actually more important than anything else. He’s figured out how this hustle works. What I don’t understand is why liberals keep indulging him with their outrage.Beck’s inversion of history, by which a people demanding more supply-side tax cuts and a conservative takeover of Congress become the civil rights activists of their time, is too patently absurd to take seriously. The historical context of the 1963 march, the size of the crowd, and MLK’s avowedly leftist social and economic politics make an enduring association between that event and this one impossible. The only people who should be genuinely angry about Beck’s event are the conservatives who have apparently decided to take the comparison to heart.
One of the real underlying stories that few report on…
Did you donate to the Glen Beck rally, expecting your dollars to be actually sent to the “SOWF” military assistance fund? Sucker… the donation money will be spent on all the rally costs first, with only the eventual leftovers to SOWF.
Beck & Palin got a largely self promotional rally and your well intentioned donations to a charity are used to pay for their self promotion instead. The honest and commonly used is to collect event costs separately from “donations to the cause”, mostly through event sponsorships, but honesty seems be alien concept to those two.
Next time, send your charity dollars directly to the organization and skip the shady middleman (and woman) that are skimming millions of dollars off the top to cover their own rally costs. Those that are comparing Beck to a slimeball Televangelist are more correct by the day.
Beck is a genius. A true American patriot, and a voracious student of history. Those that disagree with him are morons.
The best thing about the rally is that it frosted Al Sharpton’s cookies.
njk,
Just keep giving us your deeply insightful thoughts on politics… it just helps expose and reinforce the true nature of Beck followers.
Awake, who’s your hero? Olberman? Maddow? I know I know – you don’t have any heroes, you’re an independent – above the fray. So be it. But I think that Beck has some admirable ideas and frankly – I like the guy.
I wish he’d lay off Obama a bit, but still – I like him.
Besides, he gets on Sharpton’s nerves – what more could you ask for?
njk: Beck is a rodeo clown. A fat, slow, and blind rodeo clown.
#32 njk said
Beck is a genius. A true American patriot, and a voracious student of history. Those that disagree with him are morons.
Yup he could write history textbooks for the Texas schools.
his view of History is very self selective, at best he has a hold on only 10% of the whole truth
#35 njk,
I refuse to cheapen the term ‘hero’ by applying it to blabbermouth radio-DJ’s, as you seem to be applying it to Beck. It really insults the term ‘hero’, a description that should be used with great care and consideration.
Beck is more like the Wizard of Oz, a fairly ignorant man with a good stage show that easily impresses a largely fearful and fairly ignorant audience. By his own admission he is a showman, and he accommodates his rhetoric as to cater to the audience that is willing to listen.
Look behind the curtains, and you will find a man that says much but provides little in term of solutions and policies. Same for his running mate Palin, a woman who speaks only in generalities because she is devoid of real substance.
Again, if you are implying that Glenn Beck is one of your “heroes”, it insults the true heroes in our history, and shows how small and petty Beck’s followers really are in terms of values.
The Tea Party is what happens when the Klan starts wearing Crocs.
I’m amused by the Glenn Beck and Tea Party bashers.
I’ll be even more amused come November.
I’ll be even MORE amused come 2012.
I should start calling you guys Tea Party Deniers.
The British felt the same way in 1775.
It’s over 9,000.
# 27 admfubar : MLK “I have a dream”
G Beck ” I have a delusion”
Close Admiral – let me fix it for you:
MLK “I have a dream”
G Beck “I have a book deal”
CBS says 87,000? Did they rehire Dan Rather?
History will judge this event. I suspect it will be quickly forgotten and never make it into any textbooks unless the texas schoolboard has something to do with it.
It’s posts like this one that make me chuckle when adam says fox is run by democrats. Close…republicans are just a few decades behind democrats. Or, to put it another way, today’s republican is a 1940s democrat. Imagine a small government republican saying keep your hands of my social security back then. Politics is such a joke.
Beck – An original Capitalist.
He steals technique from the Evangelicals and mixes it with modern racism (but I take him at his word he is not) to line his own pockets with your (his followers) money.
#40 do the math!
Oh bad news for you Ah-Yea Moderates out number Conservatives, for the past few decades our elections have been pretty evenly split and the the Tea Party loses more Moderates votes than straight Republicans candidates (straight-Republicans??? ha ha) all it takes to keep or gain seats for the Left is to modevate the voters they have the numbers. and the Tea Party is just going to give them more.
Beck takes the message of Ron Paul, The John Birch Society, The Tea Party movement, Alex Jones, and other ‘old school patriots’ and then televangelisms them. This naturally makes me wonder about his motives.
However, at the core of the movement it’s probably OK, because the official federal government as a whole seems to dislike the movement quite a bit. It’s not like they have done any favors for most of us lately.
Beck brings up interesting points but I wouldn’t trust him to look after my gold coin collection just yet…
I hate all these number estimates for these partisan events. The only numbers that really matter are the ones at the end of the day on November 2.
I’m curious what the Beck defenders think about his gold-sales pandering.
LOL, it’s simple. His ultimate motive is self-promotion. He’s drunk with power right now, and burning the candle far too brightly. He backtracks on most of what’s he’s said in the past, and has a terrible record of doing some god-awful things.
Restoring honor my ass. He’s a charlatan.
Sieg Heil!
Oh noes!! The white people are coming! Not the scary white people. Screw those racist honkies!!1!11.
What a bunch of bullshit.
I see Beck as a borderline loon and I also know the politics of HIS religion so I take what he says with a salt lick of salt!!!
However…
There is no doubt whatsoever that the LEFT press and those that are dedicated leftists are playing the “Ministry of Truth” card for ANY of these libertarian/conservative/republican rallies.
Have any of you not looked at the grounds where these people gathered? Are you at all aware of how big the area was and the crowds that were captured in AP photos!!!????!!! YES!!! AP!!! Are THEY in the bag for the right????
And to the incorrigible Bobbo…
It MATTERS because it is a direct representation of the discontent in the broader US population. To talk it down is to diminish it and to diminish it is to get people to ignore it. That is done so that people do not consider it a viable line of personal responsibility or voting strategy so that the LEFTIST press that are the embryo of the “Ministry of Truth”, can save their messiah from total political destruction either this fall or in 2012…
And BTW, being Canadian, I have no horse in this race but hate Obama due to his disregard for Canada at every turn and then to turn about and beg US to stay in Afghanistan. SCREW YOU OBAMA.
The REAL reality in all this is that BOTH the Dems and the Reps are in for a REAL wakeup call if there is no real change in Washington after this fall. THAT much is for sure…
Just back from a few days vacation in DC with the family. Saturday afternoon we’re walking upstream against the rally attendees, so I saw quite a few of them. They were easy to spot, thanks to their t-shirts. It was a cracker convention. The vast majority where white, middle-age or older, & fat.
Later on we checked out a few museums, where as expected there was plenty of Beck followers. However, they were conspicuously absent from the Natural History museum. I wonder why.
Heard on the web…
Beck’s “I have a scheme” speech. LOL
I am also curious where all the non-white people were at the Beck event. Not to point fingers, but actions speak louder than words and Becks actions in the past have made the words, however well-meaning, ring hollow.
#56 – Should he have rented some?
This is a stupid article. Im glad to see News corp/Washington post still showing their Bullsht colors.
#13 Olo, I did use science to develop my estimate. One correction is only one of the estimates was mine, while the other two were developed by others. There are several other estimates, and they are largely in agreement with each other, with a little bit of variation.
Also, the estimates were done before the rally, it was a prediction based on various parameters like Glenn Beck’s ratings, and news stories, blog buzz, and the weather reports.
The end results show the estimates to be very accurate.
Dallas… Jon Stewart coined that one.