There Were, Like, THIS Many

If you don't pay any attention to anything anymore, then you might not know that Glenn Beck, conservative talk radio personality and crazy person on television, held a rally to "restore honor" to America. No easy task for a country that invented the krispy kream doughnut bacon cheeseburger.

And to drive home the point, he scheduled the rally for the same place, the Lincoln Memorial, on the same date that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. He claims that he didn't know it was the same date. You might say, "What kind of god dang idiot wouldn't check up on something like that?", but let's be honest. This is Glenn Beck. Racist extrordinaire.

And how did this rally honor King's memory? By fighting for equality, human rights, dignity for all people? Nope. Lower taxes.

But the hilarity doesn't stop there. CBS News commissioned an independent company to analyze images from the rally to determine how many people showed up to the event. After a scientific analysis of the data backed by years of experience, the company said that 87,000 people showed up with a margin of error of 9,000. That was the generous estimate.

Sarah Palin said there must have been over 100,000 people. Glenn Beck said there must have been over 500,000 people. His proof? He took a picture from the Washington Monument and put it on his show and told his viewers to look for themselves. Doesn't it LOOK like that many? There's tons of people. Come on, there can't be less than, like, a bajillion, right?

The company that analyzed the images said that taking Glenn's photo and making an estimate based on that is "like trying to guess how many people are in a line by just looking at them through a doorway".

This has happened all throughout history. Even in the bible there are stories about armies in the hundreds of thousands attacking cities when even the biggest cities at the time barely would have had a million people (the population of the whole world didn't even reach one billion until the 1800s). That is either a staggering percentage of the population devoted to being military personel or a completely inaccurate record made by some guy who was like "Aw man, did you see that? Must have been a million guys with armor and swords and stuff. Write that down. A million. Sounds good."

When you're in the moment, it seems like there are a ton of people with you. They sweat, and stink, and breathe on you, and push, and shove, and whine, and complain. Humans are very good at being a far bigger annoyance than they seem capable of. Glenn Beck is a perfect example of this.

So let Glenn tell you what it feels like, I'll take my facts extra-sciencey please. Maybe I'm in the wrong. After all, what has science given us but the internet and the vaccine for polio?