Saturday 12 May 2012

Fun with Fetus Fetishist Numbers. Partie II


On Thursday fern hill, and also JJ, reported on the annual March of the Feti and its habitual stoopidity with regard to its so-called MASSIVE turn-out.

Yesterday fern hill, and again JJ, brought sanity and a serious reality check to what has become a long running joke: the usual obfuscations and spinning about the number of antichoicers that showed up on Parliament Hill.

In the tweet above, I responded to Blob Blogging Wingnut's claim that 19,500 - exactly! - people showed up for M4L2012.

The Radio-Canada journalist mentioned, Brigitte Bureau, has produced some impressive investigative reporting about fundamentalist christian groups who lobby MPs and Cabinet Ministers.

Just like Faytene did at the Forgiven event, SUZYALLCAPS has determined that only those who "count" - meaning they have the right religious ideological and political creds - are to be believed.

Aaaand, no March of the Feti would be complete without these credible stand-up guys, Stephen Woodworth's homies, the Knights of Columbus!



Added: A rough translation of my exchange with Blob Blogging Wingnut:

Me: Only 10K according to Brigitte Bureau, not 19,500.

HER: How can she be more credible than someone "who laboured to count" the numbers?

Me: So this person "who laboured to count" is more credible than the reporter who did investigative journalism on christian fundamentalism?

HER: Your delusions make you say that christians are idiots. You are clearly prejudiced against catholics. You're not credible.

HER: Yes, he is more credible because he bothered to count and the police and the reporters didn't.

5 comments:

JJ said...

Ooooh CaraMia, you spoke French... :o ;)

Unfortunately for the fetus fetishists, cops are crowd control experts, which among other things means being well-versed in the art of crowd size estimating.

Anyway, what's wrong with 10k? Pretty respectable turnout for a fringe cause, I'd say.

Now, if they held this thing on a Saturday when all those kids had a choice about whether to attend it or not, we'd be looking at some seriously different statistics -- 2 or 3000, max. Hahahaha!

Gristle McThornbody said...

Just curious, are your screengrabs posted the other day accurate for the highest attendance numbers? If so, I swear on all that's holy (pardon me if I burst into flame on that one) that there are not more than 350 people in those photos.

fern hill said...

They were taken at the times shown. Given the nature of the grounds, I doubt any largish number of people could have come and gone in the intervals. I'd say they are representative of the time of the speechifying and rally before the march.

People not on the Hill may have joined the march as it went along, but not in any MASSIVE numbers, I'd think.

Niles said...

Why am I so very not surprised that SHEEZUS leaps to confirmation bias sources and lobs the 'liberal conspiracy' dirtball to defend HER tactic.

How interesting that SHE indirectly admits that HER stance doesn't have much public backing, even if SHE has to invent fascist liberals repressing HER noble mission for the Pope to explain why.

HER desire to turn the turnout into a 'we said' 'they said' debate absent of evidence seems to be how SHE bases the vast majority of her points, AKA 'say it enough and it will be true'.

In the end, it doesn't matter if the usual suspects organizing the protest want to inflate the numbers, the anti-choicers lie about so much, numbers at an annual martyr fest are a drop in the bucket.

Good thing the TrueTM Religious believe in absolutes like lying being a sin and Hell awaits those that do so. Until they don't.

I'm more interested in knowing what MPs showed up to soothe their martyred weeping and what the MPs said to them. I would very much like to hear the actual dog whistling in light of the upcoming 'debate part duh' and the actual important part, the VOTE on the committee.

Get these politicos on record while they're standing on Parliament Hill before their captive audience.

Anonymous said...

remember Niles, she is fighting a *noble* cause - akin to the effort to end slavery!

her camp must at times use shady tactics - but only to save the untold millions of unborn aborticaust victims!

it really is the fight of the century!

these people will be hailed as heroes, someday, I am sure! :P

Post a Comment