This A.P. report on today’s Virtual Peace Rally / denial of service attack reports that “about 400,000 people had registered through the group’s Web site for the call-in campaign.” Other versions of the story appear on FoxNews, CNN, the SF Chronicle, the L.A. Times, and countless other sources. None of them say a word about how many of those 400,000 registrants, if any, were actually pro-war activists who followed Glenn Reynolds’s advice and registered a pro-war message on MoveOn.org or Win Without War’s site. As I predicted, the bean counters simply tallied up the number of people who registered, reported that number, and flushed their actual messages down the proverbial toilet (no, they don’t really have proverbs about toilets, but thanks for asking). Keep that in mind the next time someone invites you to a “counter” protest on any issue.
UPDATE: This BBC story puts the number of registrants at only 250,000. Like the A.P. story, however, it makes no mention of counter-protesters. Neither does this story from Business Week, this NY Times / International Herald Tribune story, or even this story from Voice of America.