>From the Christian Science Monitor: This from today's Wall Street Journal:
Photos of the Beck event clearly show a big crowd. The weather was great whatever the exact figure, there were a lot of people there. The area along the Reflecting Pool stretching out from the Lincoln Memorial was packed. Groups were gathered under trees far on either side. Large conglomerations of folks gathered all the way to the Washington Monument. The crowd was big enough to disrupt Washington's subway system, with service from at least 12 stops disrupted due to long lines for entry. Given that context, let's wade into the numbers. Rally organizers, in applying for their permit, said they expected a crowd of up to 300,000. And on Sunday, after the rally, Beck himself said on Fox News that the event drew 300,000 people on the low end, and perhaps as many as 650,000 people on the high end. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) of Minnesota, at her own rally held on the edges of Mr. Beck's event, said, "We're not going to let anyone get away with saying there were less than a million here today because we were witnesses." However, a firm hired by CBS News to estimate the crowd put attendees at between 78,000 and 96,000. The firm, AirPhotosLive.com, had three estimators go over high-resolution aerial photos of the event, and then combined the three estimates. (One of the estimators talks about the experience here.) These kinds of debates over crowd attendance go way back. We'll close with Joni Mitchell's line: "By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong . . . " Except they probably weren't. Organizer Michael Lang later estimated the Woodstock crowd at about 400,000. Only half of those had tickets. The final tally: Sky News: 500,000 NBC News: 300,000 D.C. Official: 300,000-325,000 Glenn Beck: 300,000-500,000 ABC News: 100,000+ CBS News: 87,000 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "WillyTex" <willy...@...> wrote: > > > > do.rflex: > > Glenn Buck is 'restoring' Real America > > and God's values > > > "The crowd stretched from the memorial to > the base of the Washington Monument, about > a mile away, as Beck took the stage after > the singing of the national anthem..." > > 'Glenn Beck calls for national revival' > Politico, August 28, 2010 > http://tinyurl.com/2ueeedv >
