L'Ombre de l'Olivier

The Shadow of the Olive Tree

being the maunderings of an Englishman on the Côte d'Azur

17 April 2009 Blog Home : April 2009 : Permalink

Tea Partying on Tax Day

I've been mostly concentrating on political fun and games this side of the pond recently but I really ought to at least note the fun and games that took place on Wednesday all across the USA. I think it is fair to say that the protest was a resounding success despite (or perhaps because of) MSM and lefty attempts to diss it. And of course it didn't help that some newscasters seemed unable to grasp the difference between journalism and advocacy.

Let's look at the figures: There were over 300,000 total attendees - possibly as many as half a million - depending on who made the estimates at each location and how many locations have reported in some 500 plus events (again this number is growing). At time of writing the relevant PJTV page reports

• Number of Events: 858
• Overall Attendance: 524869

Even taking the more pessimistic numbers that means that more than 1 in 1000 of all US residents joined the protest (US population is c. 300 million). That's a pretty amazing number. As is the fact that there were 500+ separate events loosely coordinated.

Beyond the participants there was clear interest as shown by the fact that the news channel that covered the protests the most (fox) saw its share of the ratings - both in the 25-54 demographic (the one with money mostly) and overall - pretty much equal the other 3 cable news channels combined for the whole evening.:
Ow!

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