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On Halloween Eve, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert hosted the Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear) on the National Mall. The rally, a reaction to extremist journalism in general, and Glenn Beck in particular, was broadcast live on Comedy Central, as well as being covered on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere on the "Internets."
Estimates of attendance at any large-scale rally vary, but coverage showed that the national mall was full. CBS estimated 215,000 attendees and Politico estimated 250,000. Throughout the event, a number of entertainers took the stage, from Tony Bennett to Cheryl Crowe to the guys from MythBusters. Actor Sam Waterston read "The Greatest Poem Ever Written" - an ode to fear by Steven Colbert.
But, what was the rally about? Stewart is in the business of taking a novel approach to news coverage. In my book How Fantasy Becomes Reality, I write about how Stewart and Colbert carved out a fresh niche in the world of news by delivering a rational but irreverent point of view peppered with comedy. While some have bemoaned the turn, especially among young adult male viewers, to getting one's news from a comedian, research reveals that viewers of Stewart's Daily Show and Colbert's Colbert Report on Comedy Central literally score higher on tests of news knowledge than Fox news viewers.
With the rally, Stewart and Colbert took their influence and their approach to another level. While journalists are not supposed to make political statements (and notably journalists were admonished that they could not attend the rally), Stewart and Colbert challenged boundaries again by showing themselves as opinion leaders and news makers at the rally. This added to the boundary-blurring by Colbert who recently gave testimony before Congress about immigration.
Stewart acknowledged that critics would question the right of a comedian to make a political statement. The nature of the rally, however, was to de-emphasize political division and emphasize unity and collaboration. In a moment of seriousness, Stewart compared American political life to a trip through a crowded tollway, where individual drivers have principles and beliefs that differ from those of their fellow travelers, but they make their way through by cooperating in a civilized manner.
Stewart called out the cable news pundits saying that they "did not cause our problems, but [their] existence makes solving them that much harder." He said that the organizers did not call the rally "to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest times are not difficult or that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies."
A link posted on Twitter pointed to the "100 best signs" at the rally. These include an elderly gentleman holding a sign that read, "I fought Nazis and they don't look like Obama." Another sign observed at the rally pointed to "Moderate Muslims" - the sign holders themselves. As Stewart observed during the rally, "The inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe, not more."
Stewart admonished 24 hour news reporters for seeing "no one's humanity but their own." He compared the press to a funhouse mirror, saying that the distorted image we get of the other party makes us unlikely to want to reach across the aisle.
Stewart Rally Quotables:
"If we amplify everything, we hear nothing."
"Most Americans don't live their lives solely as Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives."
"The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything, we actually get sicker, and perhaps eczema."
Related Links:
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=363864&title=jo…
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/rally_to_restore_sanity_and_or_fear/…
http://www.longislandpress.com/2010/10/31/rally-to-restore-sanity-atten…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/31/3052937.htm?section=enter…
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-100-best-signs-at-the-rally-to-resto…
