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The 9/12 Tea Party photo kerfuffle

Posted 14 Sep 2009 in conservatism, media bias, teaparty

Don’t be fooled: the photo below has been widely circulated as depicting the massive crowd from Saturday’s 9/12 Tea Party protest…

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There was most definitely a tremendous gathering of angry taxpayers in Washington, DC this weekend. But this photo is not from this weekend. It’s from the 1997 Promise Keepers rally.

“It was an impressive crowd,” he [Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department] said. But after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol the crowd “only filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street,” he said.

Yet the photo showed the crowd sprawling far beyond that to the Washington Monument, which is bordered by 15th and and 17th Streets.

There’s another big problem with the photograph: it doesn’t include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth St. and Independence Ave. that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn’t show the “tea party” crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.

Likewise, American Thinker innacurately quoted a spokesman for the National Park Service as saying, “It is a record…. We believe it is the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever.” While that is an accurate quote, it happens to have been taken from a Boston.com article about President Obama’s inauguration back in January. Unfortunately, many bloggers and pundits have been quoting the American Thinker article all day, much to the delight of leftists at DailyKos and DemocraticUnderground.

Don’t believe the spin that only “scores” of people, or even mere “thousands” attended. But don’t fall prey to excessive hype, either. We still don’t have an official count. The fact remains, however, that this was a HUGE statement against the tide of big government being foisted on the American people by President Obama and the Democrat majority in Congress.

There are many other photos which accurately show the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, who attended this weekend’s protest. We conservatives need to be careful in what we report and repeat. Like Iraq’s Information Minister, who stubbornly denied America’s invasion of Baghdad, the mainstream media refuses to acknowledge the facts about the growing resurgence of conservatism. We must make certain not to provide them with justification for their bias.

Posted by FullMetalPatriot
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT

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