Don't you just hate the political protests of people who disagree with you politically? Why do the news media cover them at all? If they were real progressives/conservatives/Illuminati, they wouldn't be!

Come on Dave, there's always the sport of "crazy person (or sign) hunting." Both sides can play.

I mean, go to a globalization protest and find some vegans, right?

BTW, is that sign really "Founding Fathers Now Best"?

and that the story contained a lot of editorializing that suggested the protesters did not represent mainstream opinion.

Well, lets hope that's true. Obama as Hitler is not a mainstream position. Nor does a majority consider Obama a racist president, or his health care plan the equivalent of Hitler's Euthanasia Program. Most of the weekend's protesters do.

This seems largely true to me. Large rightish protests are rare in comparison to leftish protests.

And as far as media coverage goes, tens of thousands on a soft media day vs. Cindy Sheehan in a lawn chair in remote Texas seems like a no-brainer.

Hey, I'm no fan of protests, but in the world of protests, it doesn't seem like there's much to complain about here.

Hey James. All the war protests were staged on Saturdays, or can't you find this even in your own archives?

Google, dude, before you post. It'll do you well.

I attended one of the anti-Iraq war rallies and it was definitely on a Saturday because I worked in Arlington, and the only way I would've been able to go was to go on a weekend. It was in January or February of, I'm pretty certain, 2003. I had also attended an anti-Kosovo bombing rally a few years before that, also on a Saturday.

In fact, I'm sure there are rallies against some things on weekdays - for instance, IMF/World Bank protests happened whenever the meetings happened in DC, and those meetings took place on weekdays.

But the major anti-war rallies were on weekends.

I guess these protests would be characterized as "leftish" because they were anti-government policy and the party in power was the party of Bush.

But if you actually, really went into the crowd and beyond the signs, you would find that not an insignificant number of people were anti-war conservatives or libertarians. I would say roughly 10 percent.

Also, I'm not totally sure about this point: "Large rightish protests are rare in comparison to leftish protests."

I mean yearly, various POW/MIA bikers descend on Washington, DC. This tends to be a mixed bag, but significant numbers of right-wingers are among them.

Also yearly there's the Roe v. Wade protest by anti-abortion protestors. This is largely right wing.

All the war protests were staged on Saturdays, or can't you find this even in your own archives?

There were dozens of protests. I don't know which specific ones these people are complaining about. Nor do I know what else was on the front pages of the papers that day. Without that information, there's no way to make useful comparisons.

Well, your snark was two fold. First, that protest from the left "happen all the time". I think in the most banal sense, this is probably true. But then, in precisely the same sense, this is true of the right as well - or haven't you even been near a facility that performs abortions?

Secondly, that the war, itself, pushed any serious coverage off the front page. Which may be actually true if these protests we're happening *after* the war, which they largely weren't (again, please google).

Further, the fact that there were major - and by major, I mean at least several hundred thousand - protests numbering in the "dozens", as you say, would be pretty big news.

Except they weren't. You can complain the critics aren't being specific, and therefore you can't do any comparison, but actually that's not true. You can just look at the coverage of any major (again, definition above) and see what the coverage was compared to the tea bagger events of last summer, or the gun toting waterers of the tree of liberty of this August, or the Beck driven, DeLay organized god only knows what they were protesting incident this weekend and see the major difference.

Well, your snark was two fold. First, that protest from the left "happen all the time". I think in the most banal sense, this is probably true. But then, in precisely the same sense, this is true of the right as well - or haven't you even been near a facility that performs abortions?

I'm just thinking of mass protests,not a handful of people picketing something. The left likely dominates either way -- especially if one includes labor unions in that coalition.

Which may be actually true if these protests we're happening *after* the war, which they largely weren't (again, please google).

I conflated the complaints in the linked posts. Some were complaining about lack of coverage of a 2004 protest but others were complaining on pre-war protests.

You can just look at the coverage of any major (again, definition above) and see what the coverage was compared to the tea bagger events of last summer, or the gun toting waterers of the tree of liberty of this August, or the Beck driven, DeLay organized god only knows what they were protesting incident this weekend and see the major difference.

I don't know what actually made the front pages those days. Google's unlikely to tell me.

My sense is that the coverage of the tea bag thing has mostly been as light news -- a bunch of yahoos who can't organize a decent protest -- before this weekend, with Fox as the notable exception. Since I get my news through aggregation, though, I'm not absolutely sure of that -- I mainly see what bubbles up on the blogs and a handful of other places.

I'm just thinking of mass protests,not a handful of people picketing something.

Really? There's mass protests every other weekend in the US? So much so that it becomes part of the background noise and a ho hum media event?

To coin a phrase, what planet are you from? :)

A better comparison would be the so called.million man march. and this protest. I’m not sure about the printed press but the MSM on TV were falling all over themselves covering the first, praising and overestimating the numbers compared to how they cover the 9/12 protest which was just the opposite.

Ant-war protest have been overdone but Sheehan and her little group received more coverage than what most of the MSM gave 9/12 protestors. Picking one or two exceptions is dishonest in portraying the norm.

Hal
What do you consider a mass protest?

Certainly not all coverage is created equal. Just ask the Dixie Chix. So saying that Sheenan got more coverage without characterizing it is also disingenuous.

WRT what do I consider a mass protest, I'd say at least a couple hundred thousand. Why, what do you consider a mass protest? Millions? 10's of thousands? Hundreds?

Yeah, like the MSM is worried about being labeled as liberal. What a joke. I like how the quote refers to "tea baggers". Guess we know the bias there, don't we?