Some Perspective on the Anti-War Marches
- February 19, 2003
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The organizers of the anti-war protests over the weekend just love to breathlessly point out that MILLIONS of people showed up and that the media hasn’t been very nice since it hasn’t trumpeted those (inflated) numbers. They also like to say that because so many people showed up, then their view MUST be right. Right?
I saw this quote on Cold Fury today. It’s by a man named Ken Layne who does an excellent job of putting the anti-war marches in perspective.
The numbers are always hazy, of course. Organizers say 375,000 protested in New York City. The police say 100,000. Let’s split the difference and say 262,500. In San Francisco, the second-biggest gathering (maybe), organizers say 250,000 and non-organizers say 150,000. Fine: 200,000. Numbers are much smaller for the rest of the country. Some good-sized cities had 500 protesters. Los Angeles had “thousands.” Let’s be generous and say a million people - hell, let’s make it 1.5 million - protested this weekend across the United States. (And maybe 100,000 total marched in favor of action in Iraq, but we’ll leave them out of it for now.)
Without any publicity at all, about 50 million Americans showed up on Sunday to support the Christian god, Jesus, at church services across the nation.
An estimated 30 million bought something to eat at McDonald’s. (The global total is 46 million customers per day.)
Meanwhile, some 6 million showed up to support a blind lawyer superhero - and they paid about $8 each! The Top 12 weekend movies attracted around 15 million paying souls.
Some 4 million went to the mountains to ski or snowboard.
More than 200,000 people showed up for the Daytona race on Sunday, despite the rain. (29 million watched it on teevee.)
The car race and the war protest in New York had about the same turnout. I’d say the protest got more news coverage than Daytona, but that’s okay. If nobody went to the car race, that would be big news. If 1.5 million people protest the U.S. position on Iraq, that’s more worthy of coverage than 50 million people going to church, because the latter happens every week. But still, we’re talking about half a percent of the U.S. population - and that’s using the very generous numbers - attending rallies around the country. Impressive, sure, but “Daredevil” beat that by nearly 5 million people.
Or, to be a bit cruel, the protests attracted about as many people this weekend as the movie “Kangaroo Jack.” I’m sorry, but it’s true.
Puts a little perspective on those marches, huh?