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There was a time when the National Park Service would provide an estimate of the crowd size for events held on the mall in Washington DC. After being criticized for not sufficiently inflating the estimates to soothe the egos of various organizers, the parks people did an intelligent and reasonable thing. They declined to provide crowd estimates any more.
That made everyone happy. The National Park Service no longer had to deploy people to "count" the crowds, and they deftly sidestepped various complaints ranging from bad mathematical skills to racism.
The organizers of various events were happy too, because now their "official" numbers were, in fact, official.
Yesterday was a classic example. After hearing reports throughout the day about "thousands massing at the mall" or "a throng numbering in the thousands", the Nation of Islam released their official crowd count at 1.8 million people.
I'm happy, because now I know for sure that every estimate I hear from these events is complete and utter bullshit.
Posted by Ted at October 16, 2005 10:53 AM | TrackBackYou hit the nail right on the head,Ted.The newscasters where touting "hundreds of thousands" yet the reporter on NBC from the scene said "tens of thousands".The last comment at the end of the story said "While the numbers can't be confirmed,Metro states that during the course of the day over 375,000 had ridden public transportation".Well what the hell is THAT supposed to mean?I don't reckon there's a chance that any of those people had anywhere else to go,huh?By that reasoning I could say that the Air and Space Museum MUST have gotten 375,000 visitors yesterday.At best there where "lots" of or maybe "a bunch of" people.
You can usually tell which news crews are sucking up to these lib organizations too because they're the ones who never show any scanning or panoramic shots of the crowd.
However,all of the wide open space,absolutly no-one in line for the toilets and all of those lonely,empty,unused chairs speak a different story.
All of this is no different than the "Million Mom March" or more appropriatly "The Hundred Mom March".I still rmember Jim Vance from channel 4 news trying his best to stir up interest in this laugh riot.The number of people was so small that they never even did a follow up story that evening.I suppose there was nowhere to put the camera where it wasn't obvious that the whole thing was a big joke and that nobody was interested in their "message".
Of course none of this actually suprises me as lib organizations are notorious for making up statistics on everything from gun control to "global warming".Facts mean nothing to these people.
It is the National Park Service not US parks.
Posted by: john spencer at October 16, 2005 03:55 PMThanks for the correction John, I updated the post to reflect that.
Posted by: Ted at October 16, 2005 04:02 PMYou're not counting the little, invisible aliens FarrahCon sees in his head.
Posted by: Matt Navarre at October 17, 2005 01:26 AM