9/12 Tea Party Photo: False Image Spread By Anti-Reform Activists (HuffPo)

[Jackeens]

Tea Party protesters trying to tout the size of their march on Washington last weekend have been passing around a photo of a packed National Mall. But the picture is years old.

Politifact asked Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, if the rally was big enough to fill that space. Piringer said no -- and moreover, the picture can't be from 2009.



"It was an impressive crowd," he said. But after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol the crowd "only filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street," he said.

Yet the photo showed the crowd sprawling far beyond that to the Washington Monument, which is bordered by 15th and and 17th Streets.

There's another big problem with the photograph: it doesn't include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth St. and Independence Ave. that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn't show the "tea party" crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/14/912-tea-party-photo-false_n_286082.html

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/sep/14/tea-party-photo-shows-large-crowd-different-event/


Tea-baggers? You lie!

[ellie]

1. Bwahahahahahaha!

[fascisthunter]

2. lol

[graywarrior]

3. Now that's a huge spelling error.

[targetpractice]

4. Amazing shot for an overcast day.

The good Lord must have temporarily cleared the sky for the blessed purpose of documenting the number of teabaggers attending.

[CatWoman]

5. well, it's obviously a fake

there's not ONE porto potty :)

[Kerrytravelers]

8. *high five*

[Posteritatis]

14. Says you - those are ALL portopotties! (nt)

[WePurrsevere]

6. I believe that's the photo that was IDd by DUers as the Promise Keepers.

To the right of this is a capture from C-Span's coverage of the Tea Twits Sept 12th protest..

It was taken around 4pm so in fairness this might be towards the end of events, I'm not sure of the schedule. :shrug:

As other DUers have mentioned... there were other events scheduled on the Mall that day and it was a normal Saturday with overcast but rather pleasant weather.

[Posteritatis]

9. How busy is the Mall on most days? (nt)

[WePurrsevere]

11. Good question..

I was told by a DUer from there that Weekends there tend to attract a lot of people. I would think, like most other lovely parks, it would be. If I lived or was visiting there that would certainly be a place I'd enjoy going to spend a nice day at. :)

[Quantess]

7. Pathetic.

It's akin to stuffing socks in the crotch of tight spandex pants.

[RoccoR5955]

10. Teabagger = LIAR

Like the thing that they quoted ABC News as saying that there were 1.5 million people there. The lobbyists who are leading this, are so full of bovine fecal matter, that it will eventually bite their gluteus maximus in the long run. People, and the media will see through the guano, and figure out that the lobbiests are merely greedy illegitimate children, and shun them, as they should.

[cascadiance]

13. Obama's a liar, Obama's a fascist, Obama's like Hitler, Dems have "immoral values"...

There's a pattern here. They keep trying to throw out faux criticism of us that that have more to do with the kind of things THEY do but that they don't want to be singled out for doing by us without trying to "balance the playing field" by alleging that we were guilty of those things first!

[Christa]

12. Beware the powers of the truth

and of technology





:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[brooklynite]

15. That and the fact that...

the Teabaggers didn't pay for jumbotrons, clearly pictured in the fake.

[Control-Z]

23. No jumbotrons? Seriously?

They are just plain necessary past 3rd Street.

[brooklynite]

24. From Freedomworks itself...

[mod mom]

16. Wonder if the networks will expose this.

[AnnieBW]

17. That was the pro-choice rally

back in 2004. I have that same picture in my files.

[Froward69]

18. That photo is from the promise keepers.

in 1997 I think. could be wrong about the date.

(Sunday I was trolling Freeperland and they were debating weather or not to use it... apparently the ones who were saying "liburls were too dumb to notice". won out.)

[Jackeens]

22. Yep, looks like it's from the Promise Keepers' DC gathering in October, 1997

Half-way down this thread from Jan 09 - http://onnidan1.com/forum/index.php?topic=23417.0 - the same photo is used and captioned 'The Promise Keepers 1997'

[Control-Z]

19. This map helps put things into perspective

I've read several different reports that a small amount of the crowd spilled over onto the national mall, past the Capitol grounds and third Street. In all fairness to the freaks, it's a big place and it probably felt like a lot of people in that small end on the Capitol grounds.



Edit: Btw, the green represents people.

[zulchzulu]

20. Did the grassroots Teabaggers carry in 9 multi-ton Jumbotrons?

Wow. Impressive.

:crazy:

[zulchzulu]

21. Large version of aerial posted on February 2008 blog

A Freeper wacked site... anyway, Wordpress saves the date of the upload to the page... this photo was uploaded 02/2008.




It's the 1997 Promise Keepers Rally!