Now first of all, this is hilarious:
I work in the building right next to where this shocking “protest” was happening, and I can vouch that there was only at most six people there during the busiest moment. The previous day, they’d gotten a few more to join in, but not more than twenty.
People kept saying though, (in as many words) that: “On the day Glenn Beck comes to town, THAT’S when all our fellow protesters will come out. There will be hundreds of us, and we will force our will upon the rest of you, because we will be the majority! We will stop the hate! We’ll overwhelm all the rest of you idiots who might like to hear what Beck has to say!”
Uh huh. Is that what happened? First of all, the tickets to the event sold out in the first two hours after they went on sale. So that, right there, is 500 Glenn Beck supporters who weren’t able to counter-protest. Then there’s all the people like me, who would have liked to get tickets, but were too slow to do so – but also aren’t the sort to stand about with signs. And then there’s the ones who support Beck and do like holding signs:
In case you can’t read the signs, all you have to do is count the American flags and the yellow flags going past. The yellow ones are the “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, and they belong to quite a number of Beck supporters. Interesting point of fact: KING 5 news got their coverage right; they correctly reported that Beck supporters and protesters are mingled together BOTH sides of the street. Almost everyone else (including the local paper) have it wrong. You see, in most protest situations, the pro side stands on one side of the street, and the anti side on the other. That did not happen here. The side of the street being referred to as the “pro-Beck side” is across the street from the theater – and it’s true that side was almost all Beck supporters. But I guess the newspaper didn’t bother to read the signs on the theater side of the street, the supposedly “anti-Beck side”. That side is the one shown in the video above, and as you can clearly see, it’s more pro-Beck than not. I drove down both sides of the street personally (very slowly), and counted. The Beck supporters outnumbered the anti-Beck protesters by quite a margin, regardless of what you may hear elsewhere. And did you hear what happened earlier in Seattle? Seven thousand people bought tickets to listen to Beck at prices ranging as high as $500 each. While there were all of thirty anti-Beck protesters outside! Moments like this help restore my faith in Americans.
My pastor was the childhood friend of Glenn Beck, and he was involved with the event itself. He told me today that they raised $10,000 dollars as a fundraiser for our historic theater, and that Glenn Beck is matching that amount from his own pocket. That is beyond cool, people, $20,000 for the Lincoln!
And perhaps even more cool (on a more personal level), is that Glenn Beck stopped by our local ice cream parlor before the event and his credit card was declined. The credit people could not believe anyone would spent $500 for ice cream. So Beck drove to an ATM, withdrew the $500 and came back to make his purchase. During the event, he told everyone in the theater that if they took their ticket to the ice cream parlor after the show, they would have free ice cream waiting for them!
Seriously, though, whatever you THINK you know about Glenn Beck, whatever pithy little sound-bites or scandals about boiled frogs (and it was a plastic frog, as Beck clearly stated on the show!) you’ve heard, you owe it to yourself to get a copy of Glenn Beck’s Common Sense.
Out of Eden 