I don't have the print edition - but the Portland Photo appears on the web site prominently: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/politics/20cnd-war.html?hp&ex=1142917200&en=ad798bf32b56c89b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The NY Times ran a medium-sized photo of the huge Portland parade after the jump, but surprisingly, they did not show the four (out of 10,000) protestors who burned the American flag, a flag being pissed on daily in the Oval Office.

Guess who ran that image?

Self-proclaimed, Portland law professor BoJack, who judging by his traffic, has a blog that's on the tram to... Nowheresville.

Ah, the infamous Oregon persecution complex.

Yes, the entire NY Times' staff spends every waking hour seeking ways to minimize the significance of anything happening in Portland, Oregon.

The photo was of the Portland protest...not good enough for you? I can't imagine how you'd feel if you lived anywhere in the entire continent of Africa where stories even more newsworthy than the Oscars or the newest fashion from Milan or Paris are ignored daily by the American press.

Don't worry.....people in NY know Oregon. That's where Tanya Harding lives and it rains 348 days a year.....and, don't they have a basketball team too?

OK, Levon, I gotta be a little defensive here. Four points:

1) I didn't charge my beloved NYT with constant assault on our delicate sensibilities -- only with neglecting in this particular story to give us appropriate credit for the (apparently) largest U.S. march of the season.

Hey, in line with the general theme in the graph about the weakness of the protests, it could have been phrased "The administration could take heart that Li'l 'Ol Portland, Ore., somehow managed to put ten thousand malcontents on the street for the largest march, on a day when only 7K people marched in Chicago, 51 were arrested at the Pentagon with a fake coffin, and 3 non-combatants walked around downtown Boise..."

Yeah, the photo was sweet. But shouldn't its density make a copy editor wonder about the numbers just a little?

From what I've read so far, the largest march globally was in London, with a police estimate of 15,000. But the AP story about global protests noted that 45,000 came out in London a year ago.

One AP story put the U.S. picture this way: "During the weekend, demonstrators marking the third anniversary of the Iraq war made their voices heard worldwide, with the largest marches in London, Chicago and Portland, Ore., although in numbers that were often lower than in previous years.

"About 10,000 war protesters in Portland took nearly an hour to pass through downtown streets Sunday, some carrying signs that said "Impeach the Evildoer." More than 7,000 people marched through downtown Chicago on Saturday."

So probably my lead was wrong. Maybe the headline should be "Portland shines in a generally dim antiwar constellation."

2) And of course you're right about Africa. The ultimate pseudo-blog on that was the column in The Onion last June: Well, I Guess That Genocide In Sudan Must've Worked Itself Out On Its Own.

But even cynicism can't protect us psychologically from the horror of Darfur. I haven't been in Africa in more than four years, but I sure wish I could be in Washington April 30 for the demonstration against the genocide.

3) Finally, please note that I am a recent immigrant, attempting to demonstrate the faith of the newly converted. If you think Portland has an inferiority complex, you should try Denver.

4) What's this about a basketball team?

This post kind of reinforces the point I'm making down below.

When people think Portland, they think "freaks." There's nothing wrong with that - less than nothing: the hurly-burly of our politics, the experimental tinge that informs it, is why I live here.

At the same time, it is what it is. When 10,000 people march in Portland, Oregon, the reaction goes something like "look, 10,000 barely-relevant hippies marched in Portland. Isn't that the place that stopped cooperating with the JTTF?" No offense meant, but it becomes something of a non-event. Get those numbers in, say, Sioux Falls, South Dakota...now that's news my friends.

Not to belittle the organizing effort that got 10,000 people to march around downtown on a beautiful Sunday, but Portland may be a lot of things, but a barometer of national opinion is emphatically not one of them. Anyway, the other cities were cited because they are the major cities of the country. The paltry turn-out in each says something. To me, it says people don't see much value in protest marches. But those modest numbers also sure as hell aren't representative of some "silent majority" that still thinks the war is a bang-up idea.

Today's math lesson for people who want to skew the news:

Six people outta 10,000 burned a flag, the same one being desecrated daily in the Oval Office by Gomer Pyle Republicans ("Surprise, surprise, surprise").

Is that 1 percent of protestors?

1/10 percent of protestors?

1/100 percent of protestors?

You would think a Lewis and Clark TAX professor would have passed math and ethics classes before getting the job.

Why do you think there are so many journalist bloggers these days?

The larger newspaper miss many of the big news stories. With so many people online, my advice would be for more people to start their own websites, weblogs, podcasts or whatever. Don't let the voice of the people be silenced by bad reporting.

Let me add that Blue Oregon is doing an outstanding job of providing a forum where news and commentary can be read.

I looked up "freaks" on Wikipedia and they define it as a blogger who skews stories by running stupid or fake images about things they don't really know much about, like, war.

Sid:

Let. It. Go.

This (by which I mean whining because big cities don't notice us) makes me crazy. Let's stop giving other cities permission to make us significant and start caring what we think about ourselves.

No one I know of in NY, LA, SF or anywhere is thinking about us except, perhaps, to muse that Oregon might be nice to visit someday. Meanwhile we're like the adolescent boy in love with the hot science teacher - we think about other cities with naked need. We read their newspapers (well, who could blame us given our alternative) and fantasize that we will somehow get involved....

Yick.

Chess