by | August 28, 2010 · 6:00 am

Saturday, 8/28/10, Public Square

Contrasting Glenn Beck's life and accomplishments with MLK.

Today on the site and anniversary of MLK’s greatest speech, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and 100,000 friends will rally against everything the civil rights leader stood for.

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12 responses to “Saturday, 8/28/10, Public Square”

  1. fnord
    August 28, 2010 at 9:37 am

    ‎”Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.” — MLK

    “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” — MLK

    “A right delayed is a right denied.” — MLK

    “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” — MLK

    “At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.” — MLK

    “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.” — MLK

    “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” — MLK

    “Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” — MLK

  3. fnord
    August 28, 2010 at 10:16 am

    I’m reading a book titled, “The Help.” It is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 60s. The book is told by the ‘maids’ who work in the white women’s houses — cleaning, cooking, serving and raising their children.

    I highly recommend this book!


    Synopsis

    Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

    Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

    Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

    Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

    Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

    In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women–mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends–view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

    http://www.kathrynstockett.com/

    • wicked
      August 28, 2010 at 2:06 pm

      I saw the book on Amazon some time ago, read the synopsis and thought it looked interesting. Looks like you made a good choice, fnord.

  4. david B
    August 28, 2010 at 1:21 pm

    Exactly why are Palin and Beck implying America has lost its honor?

    American needs to restore its honor because it is now dishonorable?

    Can someone explain this to me?

    • wicked
      August 28, 2010 at 2:09 pm

      The only dishonor where American is concerned is Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, and too many congress critters to mention.

      And who is measuring the honor? Can’t be France. Can’t be all those “other countries whose opinions we don’t care about.” Whose left? The Right? Or a small wedge of it?

  5. fnord
    August 28, 2010 at 5:23 pm

    Sneaky Obama voter that I am, I dressed non-descriptly in a navy-blue T-shirt and white shorts, donned my camera on a strap and took the bus down to the Glenn Beck Restoring Honor rally in Washington, D.C., today. JEALOUS? I wanted to see this Tea Party phenomenon up close. And I did. Here are some of my photos of the folks I encountered. Please rank them on their patriotism! They would like to do the same to you…

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-shrake/the-teabaggers-are-here-t_b_698020.html?ref=fb&src=sp#s132218

  6. tosmarttobegop
    August 28, 2010 at 9:41 pm

    While heading into Wichita yesterday evening I noticed the Pick-up in front of my had a dozen anti-Obama bumper stickers all over the tail gate.

    Most was in no way based on any form of reality.

    I thought some people show their ignorance by opening their mouth while other show theirs by making a billboard out of their tail gate!

  7. tosmarttobegop
    August 28, 2010 at 10:52 pm

    I am really beginning to think that Politics destroys more brain cells then drugs do!

    • indypendent
      August 29, 2010 at 3:11 pm

      Especially when it seems alot of radio talk personalities have had their own struggles with drugs.

      Maybe that is the problem?

  8. fnord
    August 30, 2010 at 12:40 pm

    Can we really get an accurate count of the number of people who attended Saturday’s Glenn Beck “Restoring Honor” rally? The answer might be, “No, we can’t.”

    Crowd-counting science is far from exact. Much of it is based on examination of overhead photos to calculate crowd density and related statistics. It reminds us of the old intelligence agency practice of “shedology,” in which the Central Intelligence Agency and others estimated Soviet weapons numbers by looking at overhead photos of military sheds and calculating how many tanks they might hold.

    Plus, numbers are inevitably colored by an estimator’s interest. Rally organizers usually say crowds were huge, bigger than expected. Critics will say the numbers were less than anticipated. That’s been the case for years.

    That’s led to controversy in the past. In October 1995, the National Park Service estimated that about 400,000 people attended the “Million Man March” organized by the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan. Organizers were so angry they sent lawyers to meet with the Park Service.

    Shortly thereafter, the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing estimated that the crowd had been 837,000, plus or minus 20 percent. What was the difference? The Park Service counted via pictures taken from videotape. The Center for Remote Sensing used original photo negatives.

    Photos of the Beck event clearly show a big crowd. The weather was great – whatever the exact figure, there were a lot of people there. The area along the Reflecting Pool stretching out from the Lincoln Memorial was packed. Groups were gathered under trees far on either side. Large conglomerations of folks gathered all the way to the Washington Monument.

    The crowd was big enough to disrupt Washington’s subway system, with service from at least 12 stops disrupted due to long lines for entry.

    Given that context, let’s wade into the numbers.

    Rally organizers, in applying for their permit, said they expected a crowd of up to 300,000. And on Sunday, after the rally, Beck himself said on Fox News that the event drew 300,000 people on the low end, and perhaps as many as 650,000 people on the high end.

    Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) of Minnesota, at her own rally held on the edges of Mr. Beck’s event, said, “We’re not going to let anyone get away with saying there were less than a million here today because we were witnesses.”

    However, a firm hired by CBS News to estimate the crowd put attendees at between 78,000 and 96,000. The firm, AirPhotosLive.com, had three estimators go over high-resolution aerial photos of the event, and then combined the three estimates. (One of the estimators talks about the experience here.)

    These kinds of debates over crowd attendance go way back.

    We’ll close with Joni Mitchell’s line: “By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong . . . ”

    Except they probably weren’t. Organizer Michael Lang later estimated the Woodstock crowd at about 400,000. Only half of those had tickets.

    http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2010/0830/Glenn-Beck-rally-attendance-calculating-how-many-really-showed-up

    • wicked
      August 30, 2010 at 1:29 pm

      I’ll just quickly point out that 400,000 is pretty close to half a million. And if my friends and I had been at Woodstock, it would’ve been half a million. (BTW, I was watching the documentary about this the other night, and 400,000 was the figure given in it. The promoters lost a fortune. Can you believe tickets were $8?)

      It really doesn’t matter how many attended Beck’s rally. We know from photos that many people snoozed through the speeches, right? 😉

      I recall the photos from Obama’s inauguration. His beat Beck’s by a million. 🙂

      My job here is done. Have a great day!