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Friday Night Open Thread

By Jeralyn, Section Blog Related
Posted on Fri Sep 18, 2009 at 08:34:13 PM EST
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Via Surburban Guerilla, a new Janis Joplin song from 1968:

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

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    Friday Night Open Thread | 12 comments (12 topical)

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    I was discussing some history (5.00 / 3) (#1)
    by kenosharick on Fri Sep 18, 2009 at 08:42:21 PM EST
    related issues in the news with my students this week and one young lady wanted to know why no covered the 2million people who had marched in DC against Obama.  I tried to gently straighten her out on the numbers, but she responde that her brother who is a political science major at GWU was there and KNEW that that many people were there.  Her brother was inscensed that no media had covered the event. Of course all major media covered it extensively (including the Wash. Post on the front page). I doubt either of these young people looked at a newspaper, but probaly got their "news" from rush or glenn. After our discussion, I could tell that she did not believe me for a second- after all, as a college instructor, I am part of the vast left-wing conspiracy.

    Give them some historical context (5.00 / 2) (#6)
    by Cream City on Fri Sep 18, 2009 at 10:34:18 PM EST
    about marches on Washington -- all the way back to Coxey's Army, but we don't have crowd estimates on that.  However, my fave blog by two women of a certain age, as we say, has this to say about the tea partiers:

    A few thousand white folks called in sick to work last week so they could parade around the nation's capital on Saturday and Fox News declares a revolution is underway.  My goodness.  I don't know which is more sad - the fact that they couldn't spell half the words written on their illegible signs or that they all left their white hoods at home.  Bring the hippies back.  Their protests were much more entertaining.  Just to give you some perspective:

        * 1925 -  Ku Klux Klan - 35,000 KKK members marched on Washington
        * 1963 - March for Freedom with Martin Luther King - 250,000 marched
        * 1969 - March to end the Vietnam War - 600,000 marched
        * 1993 - Gay and Lesbian Rights - 800,000 marched
        * 1995 - Million Man March - 600,000 marched
        * 2004 - March for Women's Lives (Pro-Choice)  - over 1 million marched
        * 2009 - Obama Inauguration - over 1 million celebrate
        * September 12, 2009 - Tea Party Hillbilly Rally - 78,000 marched but only 3 seemed to know what they were marching about.

    And there's more, always much more, as the wonderful Margaret and Helen take on the media and tell it like it was and is:

    But it's not really these 78,000 marchers that worry me.  It's the media that gives them so much attention.  Did anyone else notice that when a million Pro-Choice women marched on Washington and 50 nut-jobs stood on the corner mis-quoting the bible, it was the bible thumping nut-jobs getting more coverage on the evening news?

    Yeh, as we discussed here the other day, a lot of us women of a certain age lost a lot of respect for the media that day.  So what we saw last year was just more of the same. . . .


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    Thanks- this is what I did (5.00 / 1) (#11)
    by kenosharick on Sat Sep 19, 2009 at 09:42:08 AM EST
    I talked about the two marches I participated in and how when you are in the middle of the crowd it may seem larger than it actually is. I am marching in October (gay rights) and I wonder how much coverage we will get.

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