Political Irony

Estimates of the crowd size at Saturday’s Beckapalooza tell an interesting story:

CBS News commissioned a crowd estimate from AirPhotosLive.com, which based their count on aerial pictures it took during the rally. They estimated 87,000, with a margin of error of 9,000. So they claim between 78,000 and 96,000 people attended.

Sarah Palin claimed over 100,000 people attended. Almost believable.

Glenn Beck says between 300,000 and 650,000 attended. Starting to climb.

But Michele Bachmann (R-MN) displays her overly firm grasp of reality by claiming that no fewer than 1 million people were there.

A fire at the construction site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro (in a town near Nashville TN) has been ruled as arson. Gasoline was poured on several pieces of construction equipment and ignited.

So let me get this straight. Someone who considers themselves to be a real American was upset about terrorism, so they set a church building site on fire?

We have met the terrorists, and they is us.

Locals have been holding protests over the construction of the Islamic center, claiming that the site will be turned into a terrorist training ground for Muslim militants bent on overthrowing the U.S. government. Seriously.

At a prayer vigil against the center, one person told a local TV station, “No mosque in Murfreesboro. I don’t want it. I don’t want them here. Go start their own country overseas somewhere. This is a Christian country. It was based on Christianity.”

I think some amount of applause is due to Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of the RNC who also served as Bush campaign manager in 2004. Mehlman announced in a magazine interview that he is gay. And, as someone snarkily put it, he wasn’t even arrested before he made the announcement. Even more, he plans on becoming an advocate for gay marriage. Says Mehlman:

It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with that part of my life. Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I’ve told my family, friends, former colleagues and current colleagues and they’ve been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that has made me a happier and better person. It’s something I wish I had done years ago.

It is something we wish he had done years ago, too, since ironically Mehlman’s leadership positions in the Republican party came at a time when they were working hard to get anti-gay marriage amendments passed in many states. Mehlman now states that, as a solitary Republican, he could not go against the party consensus, but that he wishes he had tried.

Still, I’ll take his contrition as a breath of fresh air, and hope that this helps counter increasingly anti-gay sentiments coming from the Republican party.