The protest that never was

“When over 100,000 people gather in protest, and are ‘allowed’ by federal officials to march past the White House for the first time in a decade,” writes Silver this morning at Claire Wolfe's blog, “you might think it was news. When tens of thousands more gather for the same reason in cities across the country and the world, you might expect to read about it.”

As Silver reports, yesterday’s enormous anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. and the smaller gatherings throughout the nation seem to have been largely dumped down the Memory Hole. Plenty of people argue that the U.S. press has a “liberal bias.” More truthfully, it has an Establishment bias, so Saturday’s demonstrations were given little attention by the lapdog news media.

In case you hadn’t heard, D.C. police and U.S. Park Police estimated that about 150,000 anti-war protesters participated in yesterday’s march around the White House, along Pennsylvania Avenue, and to the Washington Monument grounds, where a concert and rally were held. Coincidentally (for those not believing in government conspiracies), 13 Amtrak trains running between New York and Washington just happened to be delayed for up to three hours on Saturday morning for repair of overhead electrical lines, which held up thousands who were on their way to the march. Metro delays were also reported in northern Virginia on the Blue and Yellow lines.