Here is a bit of media fuckery. The LA Times quotes Jonathan Weisman, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was covering Obama's Bicentennial rally, as disparaging the crowd size.
"Fall Out Boy gets crowds this big," Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal said at the Miami rally, referring to the pop punk band. "But I don't think they are going to end up in the White House."You can't learn anything about the outcome based on how big the crowd is," Weisman continued. "These are the people who are already convinced."
FAIR retorts that's a ridiculous line of thought, and digs around to find that the biggest crowd those BE-eyelinered pop punkers have played for in the past year was about 20,000.
But let's be a little more fair. There's no telling how many Hot Topic habitués would turn out for a free FOB concert if it were held in Bicentennial Park. Plus there's only so many people the place can hold, so did Obama's crowd of about 30,000 beat out other big-time concerts at the venue?
Well, the last time Ultra Music Festival was a one-day event (in 2006), it attracted 30,385 fans. About equal to Obama. But last year's two-day Ultra drew an estimated 70,000 people. Only 25,000 tickets were available for the first day, so at the very least about 45,000 people had to cram the park for day two. So sorry, Barack, you might be more popular than Pete Wentz, but you pale in comparison to the likes of Underworld and Paul Van Dyk. I mean, if we put aside the fact that it was an all-day event, with like 50 acts, that people fly in for.
