Timothy Kincaid

Louis Marinelli, the bus driver for the National Organization for Marriage’s Tour of Mostly-Empty City Plazas (and Church Parking Lots) is breaking under the stress, falling apart, going bonko. And though it’s shameful to admit, I find it fascinating to watch.

Well, that and the fact that the rest of their tour is so mind-numbingly boring that he’s the only thing interesting to watch, kind of like a demented clown at a particularly bad circus.

So, anyway, I’ve been giving Marinelli a little grief over at his website about the count he reports for attendees. For some reason he thinks it’s not quite as embarrassing if he doubles or triples the tiny turnout – like 40 is bad but “over 100” is something to be proud of.

And it’s so obvious. Not only does the Trial Tracker crew do hand counts and take pictures, but even NOM will post pictures that make it clear that at stop after stop they are only talking to a handful of people in a big open space. Clearly they were hoping that fired up marriage supporters would be greeting them at each city showing that American wants to defend marriage from the homos. It’s sad.

Yet Louis tries – desperately – to put a spin on it. Stop after stop he’s put on a brave face and tried to make it look like NOM’s little tour is a glorious success. But this time he’s finally lost it.

At Des Moine there were a whopping 86 people who showed up. All in all, that’s not bad for this tour which has seen “crowds” as small as 19. But it wasn’t good enough for Louis Marinelli. Oh no, he announced:

As you can see, our 150+ supporters gathered in the shade to escape the hot glaring sunshine. Our stalkers over at the NOM Tour Tracker love to downplay the turnout we have at our rallies. The last thing they want is for the public to see a strong turnout of Americans who support marriage between a man and a woman only. That is why they have been constantly claiming that our turnouts have been very low. Now this picture shows about fifty people but it is taken from within the crowd. A conservative estimate would be 150 yet the stalkers from Califrornia claim we had less than 90. They do this so that they can (and they have) claim that the counter-protesters who show up to interfere with the rally “outnumber” our supporters.

Oh, but there was just on teensy little problem. You see, NOM itself had posted a front facing elevated angle picture of their crowd in a way that caught all of them. No stragglers, no “just outside the frame”, no “lots more to the left”, no “but half the crowd is behind the ones you see”; nope, every single soul listening to their speakers drone on in Des Moines was caught in glorious color. And NOM, bless their hearts, posted this picture with digital clarity that lets you blow it up big. Real big. Big enough to count every last one of the 86 people at the rally.

Now a better person than me would have been gracious. A more polite, loving observer might have suggested that perhaps it was early, maybe some were laying down behind the others, maybe there were folks way the heck back on the other side of the plaza listening. But sadly, I’m just not that noble.

So I kinda teased Louis just a bit. I maybe, just for a moment (or two) suggested that everyone reading his blogsite count for themselves and hinted a itty bitty bit that Louis was maybe stretching things just ever so slightly. Okay, maybe it wasn’t teasing a little bit; maybe it was full on taunting.

My bad.

But who knew that it would cause Louis to come completely unhinged? Who knew that this would be the result:

Our rally today in Sioux City attracted about 80 people. Our opponents claim that only 56 showed up but that of course, is because they need to make it sound like there were more people at their same-sex ‘marriage’ rally they held than who showed up to support authentic marriage between a man and a woman. They can take a picture from forty feet away and count the heads they see. Sure from that point of view and in a two-dimensional photo, there very well may be only 56 heads visible. But said photo lacks important aspects such as depth which is why their head count of 56 is about 25 heads short. There’s no way one photo from one vantage point is going to show each person standing in a group! It’s a very simple concept yet our opponents have made this mistake time and time again – but the point is that it actually isn’t a mistake. They are doing this on purpose because if NOM appears to have high turnouts or at the very least turnouts that are greater than their counter protests, then they lose. This is why time and time again we see their estimates of our turnouts to be lower than media reports and more importantly, lower than their counter-protest turnout. The first thing they posted today was about turnout focusing on 56 NOM supporters and a convienently slightly higher 64 same-sex marriage supporters.

Oh, Louis honey, we don’t care if there were 56 or 80 or 110. It’s all still so very very laughably pathetic. After months of planning and effort and with hundreds of churches in town to draw from, you’re getting next to no one. And your wild exaggerations are only making you sound sad and desperate.

But those five furious paragraphs weren’t enough. No, Louis had to prove his point (not really something I really recommend for someone with Louis’ grasp on reality). He posted a picture of part of today’s rally (about 28 people total) and a picture of two women picking up materials at NOM’s table and issued a challenge.

Challenge: Find these two women signing up to join the NOM team in the picture of the rally above.

Because if we couldn’t find these two in his cropped picture well, that proved something. Or other. But it gets worse.

You already know where this is going, don’t you?

Yeah.

Me: The blond woman in green is next to the guy in the baseball cap to the right.

Yeah, somehow I think this trip just hasn’t been as fun as Louis thought it would be. And I do feel kinda dirty for being so unkind.