In a move no one expected, Drudge lies in as obvious a manner he did with Beck's rally. Note: I am often bad at choosing the right words, but felt i needed to get my point down. The second link I attempt to explain the extreme, if sometimes subtle, distortions of the rightwing media and how they speak volumes even on a small scale concerning the MSM's clearly partisan support for the right and assaults on the left. Thanks for baring with me.
On Drudge's site, he is devoting two lines to the protest held yesterday, as well as a third that makes a point to say Obama wasn't at the rally. Its sad even compared to the coverage of Beck's rally.
'Thousands' gather in DC in support of Dems agenda...
This headline on Drudge isn't wholly deceptive, but compared to the way he inflated Beck's numbers from the start it seems weird. The article linked does indeed state that "thousands" of people came..It was wholly unclear, and anyone who saw the event would easily know that there were "thousands" of participants. So theres no need to really mention it as your headline article, especially with scare quotes.
AP: Crowd 'less dense' than Beck rally...
Well this one is definitely intentional distortion. The article linked by drudge is a rather upbeat one, basically saying that we are getting energized for the election thanks to a renewed push by democratic politicians. But most people drudge relies on don't actually read his sources, so he can link to a praising article by quote mining without worry. Here is the part he pulled his "crowd 'less dense'" maneuver:
Organizers claimed they had as many participants as Beck's rally. But Saturday's crowds were less dense and didn't reach as far to the edges as they did during Beck's rally. The National Park Service stopped providing official crowd estimates in the 1990s.
This is fine really. Its hard to measure crowd size in places like this, and should come as no surprise that there would be conflicting numbers. What makes this odd, of course, is how Drudge played when it was Beck's rally compared to how Drudge played with ours.
A day after the rally, there are still no hard numbers, because no one is really keeping track. Thats ours. With Beck's, before the day was even partway over they had already determined the number of people(inf)*, the numbers of racists (n/0)** exaggerated it dozens of times, called the left wing media liars and accused us of lying about low numbers in their crowd. As Keith Olbermann put it so well, in 10 years we'll ALL have been at that rally.
...But when its our rally? Drudge doesn't even bother to get the token number estimate that they wring out of some wandering park service employee, instead only referring to the wholly nebulous terms that one should describe all such rallies with. When Fox and Drudge didnt report even an estimate, I could imagine the media at large deciding not to mention any numbers at all, since doing so will only get them attacked by the wingnuts. But if its a right wing rally, be sure to expect detailed but wholly fictional and ever-increasing descriptions of the vastness of their crowd spreading around every news website and news show.
There was a time when the whole media spat on protesters, laughed at them, and ignored them. That was when the left was protesting in the hundreds of thousands across multiple cities and states to try and end the most corrosive of the nation's policies and military action. Funny, its almost as if it were okay to protest if you're a republican, and are far more deserving of media coverage when your numbers are small your protest is about something stupid.
For instance: accusing President Obama of being a combination of multiple political and social ideologies simultaneously, even though all or most of them are incompatible with each other, and even if they are using an incorrect definition of term, especially when both the incorrect description and the one they should have used are both untrue. Or saying Health Care Reform will destroy the country without noting that its started coming into effect, and the sky has not fallen. This is what gets you on the news these days: A small group of insane jerks doing insane jerk things. A million liberals could rally and before the event even started, we'd be down to 1000 on drudge.
Obama doesn't drop by; heads to Camp David...
This is wording is a bit...Odd. Frankly I'd much rather have Obama celebrate his marriage anniversary than have him come to our rally. And of course, he's still going to be doing his presidential duties. Thats what Camp David is for. It also serves to remind Drudge and the right-wing media: Unlike Glenn Beck, President Obama is spending his time trying to help the country, and I'd much rather have him focus on that to preach to his choir. Everyone at yesterday's protest was a shoe-in for the democratic party.
Not that Obama couldve gotten a favorable reaction ever from the right. If he had come to talk to our rally, the republicans wouldve gone crying to Fox and attacked Obama for wasting time with his marxisocialist base, rather than running the country. President Obama has to spend all his time worrying about the fate of the free world, and doesn't have time to refute every single insanity the right throws at him, especially when he knows he cant dispel any myths, no matter how hard he tries (birthers.) Fox, on the other hand, does nothing to try to make the world a better place, and so they can use all their time and resources to think up new and more insane conspiracy theories, which is a much better use for their money than actually helping the poor and working class they claim to support.
A president must play defense against a media by its very nature. This time though, the right's whole ideology is like being a screaming child in a car, kicking the driver's seat as the parents (President Obama) drive, until the screaming right gets the wheel. Once given, however, only the screamers and meaners remain, and no one knows how to make the wheel work anymore.
Thanks for reading all through my thing! I hope I chose the right words!
