-By Warner Todd Huston
On a long drive home from a Indianapolis this weekend, I had the dubious pleasure of listening to a CBS news break at the top of the hour on a talk station and in one of their reports on Saturday’s anti-War protests the verbiage used to report the gatherings was so slanted that it was startling and was so obviously intended to make it seem much greater than it really was that it wasn’t even funny.
Reporter Jim Taylor started his report saying “A nation says no to war …” as an introduction to the story of the goings on in Washington.
A “nation” says no? A few protests equates the the whole nation, CBS?
Taylor intoned this phrase as if the entire of the United States had risen up to say no to the actions in Iraq. But, one protest in Washington and a few in scattered other cities does NOT a “nation” make. The Denver Post called one of the protests in 2003 The largest war protest since Vietnam, so even compared to previous Iraq war protests this one was smaller. And, compared to the protests the nation saw during the Vietnam war, the Iraq war has not produced anything near the numbers that supporters such as CBS wish to make it seem.
So “tens of thousands” appeared in Washington to protest the war.
By contrast, More than 1 million revelers were in Times Square for the recent New Years celebration.
Let’s get a bit more prospective. There are over 300 million people who live in America. About 3 million people live in the areas surrounding Washington D.C. There are about 550,000 people who live right in Washington D.C. itself.
Yet, all they could muster was “tens of thousands”?
The numbers are practically underwhelming. But, CBS News and other supporters of the anti-war “movement” (led by such newcomers as Jane Fonda) are desperately trying to make this thing seem much greater than it really is.
(on a side note, remarks given to the adoring crowd by one of the nuts that the CBS report featured was funny for its complete stupidity. A protester yelled “Bush can’t fire us, but WE can fire him”. Um, no Mr. protester. You can’t “fire him”. You had that chance in 2004 and the people voted him right back into office, a job from which he will retire without being “fired”. Another leftie who doesn’t know how anything works.)
Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, men’snewsdaily.com and americandaily.com among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a guest on several radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston