Richard Gizbert writes on HuffPo:
To watch and read the media coverage this week of the democratic race for the White House, one would conclude that the results of the Oregon and Kentucky primaries were the big news.
However, there was another event that said more about where things stand than the vote counting did.
Barrack Obama drew a crowd of 75,000 people in Portland over the weekend.
75,000 people. That’s one person for every six residents of Portland, there to hear a politician speak.
The New York Times described the crowd as a multitude. When is the last time a multitude came out to see a politician in America? A pope, maybe. Or U2. But not a politician.
What was odd is that other major US dailies failed to treat a turnout the size of a small city at a political rally as anything remarkable, or particularly newsworthy.
The LA Times mentioned it, four paragraphs into a story about Obama’s attacks against John McCain on social security, lobbyists and foreign policy.
It was hard to find any reference to the Portland multitude on the Washington Post’s site, which also gave greater prominence to the McCain/lobbyist story.
So, when was the last time a great big crowd showed up for a political event in Oregon? How about when John Kerry drew 50,000 in 2004.
Oh, and by the way, both the Kerry event in 2004 and the Obamapalooza on Sunday were preceded by free rock concerts.
Since there was nobody making an official count at either event, I’d bet the margin of error for both rallies makes them more similar in size than the reported numbers suggest.