A few weeks ago, a small crowd of shouters, shriekers, and "tea-baggers" gathered on the National Mall at the behest of certain radical reactionary hate-mongers.
Last Saturday (26 September), their numbers were dwarfed by real people who gathered to celebrate books -- real books -- books with real words and real ideas.
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A few weeks ago, several thousand "tea-baggers" gathered on the National Mall at the behest of Glenn Beck, Tom DeLay, and Fox Noise where they waved signs depicting Obama as Hitler, denounced him as a socialist (or is it a Marxist?), and generally displayed more ignorance in one place than anyone believed possible.
Organizers of this "tea party" continue to spread the lie that the crowd was over one million when, in fact, all believable estimates put the crowd size at 60 - 70,000.
This past Saturday -- 26 September 2009 -- the Library of Congress sponsored the National Book Festival on the Mall. The Festival was established in 2001 by then-First Lady Laura Bush, a former reading teacher. It is staffed by volunteers from the Junior League of DC. Tents are erected on the Mall and over 80 nationally-known authors of all genre of books attend to speak, read selections from their writings, mingle with the crowd, and sign their books.
In 2007, over 120,000 people attended (DOUBLE the number of the "9-12 tea party"); the 2008 crowd was slightly more and this year's crowd was even bigger -- attendance estimates are not in but the signature lines for some authors numbered over 1,000 EACH and officials already estimate the crowd at larger than the previous two years.
Here is the website for the just-concluded National Book Festival.
And here's a list of authors who attended.
Now -- let's note a few facts:
- Crowd at the National Book Festival dwarfed the crowd at the "9-12 tea party" -- and have done so for at least three years.
- "Authors" such as Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly, and other noted rightwing shills WERE NOT PRESENT -- and no one missed them.
- Instead of placards filled with lies and racial insults, the crowd carried BOOKS -- real books with real words and real ideas.
Maybe the nation is not in as much trouble as we thought.