While it's fun to play the crowd-size game, the real numbers we should be investigating when it comes to Glenn Beck are the dollar figures.
How much did the event cost? We don't know. Will Bunch, in The Backlash, writes about an early estimate of $2 million, half of which would be financed by Beck himself. But who knows at this point? The entire theme of the event has since changed.
There's also the Kennedy Center event on Friday, in addition to the massive expense of renting half of the National Mall for a day, plus equipment, talent fees, security, travel and so forth. Sarah Palin alone charges $75,000 for a speaking engagement. What's the total amount of the overhead?
How much did Beck claim to raise for the SOWF charity? He says it's $5.5 million on his website, but the website also notes in the fine print that all donations will go towards financing the event first before being donated to SOWF. So is the $5.5 million over and above the cost of the event? In other words, did Beck seriously raise the entire overhead plus $5.5 million for the charity? That's a lot.
The skeleton key in all of this is obviously Beck's history of doing business with shady sponsors. Goldline, also documented in Bunch's book, has scammed countless Beck followers out of their money. One in particular wanted to buy $5000 in gold, but only received $3400 in actual gold. The rest of her "investment" went to fees and the overvalued price she paid Goldline for the coins. So this Beck fan would have to see a huge increase in the price of gold just to break even.
Meanwhile, the Survival Seeds people, another major Beck sponsor, are snake-oil salesmen. Their previous business was being investigated by the FTC for outrageous claims about the diet properties of a ridiculous gunk that oozes from rocks in the Himalayas (see also Himalayan weight loss).
Follow the money.