Just two days before Glenn Beck's August 28 "Restoring Honor" rally, the Washington Post published an article about how the rally would "be a measure of the tea party's strength."
"When Fox News and talk radio host Glenn Beck comes to Washington this weekend to headline a rally intended to 'restore honor' to America, he will test the strength - and potentially expose the weaknesses - of a conservative grass-roots movement that remains an unpredictable force in the country's politics," staffer Amy Gardner argued in the opening paragraph of her August 26 story.
Gardner's article is but one example of the media's skeptical attitude prior to the Beck rally.
Yet just days after two Comedy Central hosts announced mock rallies for October 30 on the Mall, the liberal media are expecting that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert can easily draw a large crowd.
I noted the breathless anticipation of Newsweek's Daniel Stone last Friday. Now it seems that Matea Gold of the Washington bureau of the Tribune Company is also decidedly optimistic. In her 13-paragraph article, accessible at LATimes.com, Gold quoted a few folks who plan on attending and took the Facebook RSVPs on face value as a signal about potential attendance:
As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 132,000 people planned to attend, according to the event's Facebook page, while satellite rallies were being organized in Chicago, Seattle, Austin and other cities.
Nowhere in her article did Gold give ink to any skeptic who would rain on the Comedy Central parade by suggesting the initial "hey, that sounds cool" interest by Stewart/Colbert fans would fail to flesh out into actual attendance after they consider the cost and hassle of attending the event.
