Unstated though strongly implied provision in job description for MSNBC pundit -- propagandizing as necessary to generate large crowds/mobs to protest whatever liberals are angry about that week.
Dutiful as ever, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow did her part to honor this during her show last night. Protests over the death of Baltimore resident Freddie Gray while in police custody have spread to cities beyond Baltimore, Maddow reported.
One of the other cities is Washington, Maddow claimed, with protesters gathering outside the White House --
So the nation's eyes are on Baltimore for obvious reasons but the protests, the reaction to the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore police custody, is becoming more than a Baltimore story.
This is the scene right now in Minneapolis, Minn., you can see a pretty large group of protesters. We've been keeping an eye on the chopper shots that we've had of this protest tonight over the course of the evening as this protest has been going for a while. It's been moving through the city of Minneapolis, at times it has blocked some pretty major roads and intersections. Again, we're keeping an eye on that demonstration in Minneapolis.
Fair enough -- the footage showed a crowd numbering perhaps 200 to 300 people, enough anyway to justify Maddow's description of them as a "pretty large group."
But Maddow then described a much smaller turnout at the White House in the same way --
And we have seen some pretty good-size demonstrations popping up across the country tonight. One of those right now -- can we drop that bug actually so we can see (instruction to remove graphic from screen) in the future, thank you, on the bottom side of your screen there you can see a pretty large crowd gathered outside the White House to protest in Washington, D.C. Minneapolis, Boston, Milwaukee, Wisconsin -- there's been a number of cities around the country today where there have been pretty good-sized protests. This story does seem to be getting more nationalized as the days go on.
And as anyone even vaguely familiar with MSNBC is aware, they are huge fans of nationalizing just about everything. "Pretty good-size protests" -- spoken like a true activist masquerading as a news anchor.
When it comes to that allegedly sizable protest outside the White House, footage from the Hay-Adams across Lafayette Square, with darkness falling, appeared to show two or three dozen people -- at best. And given that there are always security personnel stationed there, and tourists taking photos, and end-of-the-world types wearing sandwich boards, and soapbox speechifiers, and homeless people, and surely a few media types on this night, the number of actual demonstrators must be even smaller.
Had it been a tea party protest, Maddow would have dissolved in laughter.
