Jon Stewart announced on “The Daily Show” last week that he would be holding a “Rally to Restore Sanity” in Washington D.C.
Stewart’s announcement was met with raucous cheers from his studio audience. Hoisting pre-made signage for rally-goers such as, “I disagree with you, but I’m pretty sure you’re not Hitler” and “9/11 was an outside job,” Stewart hopes to bring down the partisan vitriol several notches by holding a rally meant for people “who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive and terrible for your throat.”
In typical fashion, Stewart is ingeniously tapping into the disgruntled masses that continue to be appalled by the talking heads on either side of the aisle.
Stewart believes these ideologues appeal to extreme fringes and a small sliver of the populace. They’re the ones being heard because they’re the loudest, they provide the most shock value (example: guy who wants everyone to burn a Quran), and because normal people are too damn busy working and leading normal, productive lives.
Rallying is for crazed loons with nothing better to do, Stewart contends, not the “70 to 80 percenters” who might own an assault rifle but not think it’s appropriate to bring to a rally.
But for one day, on Oct. 30, he’s banking on normal people hiring a baby sitter and coming out to demonstrate that they’re reasonable, rational people.
In our bitterly divisive era, Stewart’s “call-to-reasonableness” sounds like an attempt to parody recent events like Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally — and it is — but people are taking it seriously.
In less than a week, the rally’s Facebook page has 130,000 confirmed guests —Becks’ rally drew 87,000.
Even Oprah tweeted that she thinks Stewart is on to something.
But is there a chance Stewart’s rally can get the attention of the national media and leaders in Washington, and convince them to grow up and stop shouting?
Unfortunately, probably not.
Stewart is forgetting — or refusing to admit — that those who most need a reality check are the whack jobs in Washington, and the only thing that gives them pause are poll numbers.
Poll numbers show 18 percent of Americans still think President Barack Obama is a Muslim and 43 percent are unsure of his religion. Numbers show that more Americans believe 9/11 was an elaborate government conspiracy than the stimulus package created any jobs (news flash: it did).
It’s our representatives who persist in participating in elaborate games of partisan hackery, but we’re the ones giving them the ammunition to continue. We give them approval with our eyeballs when we watch reality TV drama, and we give them approval with our vote on election day when we decide we’d rather maintain the status quo of shouting, partisanship and fear mongering.
Just this week they were at it again, as Senate Republicans filibustered the DREAM Act and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because they wanted to stiff-arm Democrats looking for traction as midterms approach. The only reason the Democrats put those measures on the table at this time was to do precisely what the Republicans were calling them out for.
Partisan maneuvers from the Left and Right persist, and Arizona is a shining example of this. Just ask Sen. John McCain, who years ago supported the DREAM Act but was one of the leading filibusterers causing its failure this week. But McCain is a master chameleon, and he’s shifted from moderate to extreme because that’s where the electorate in Arizona is. They want to “build the dang fence,” and our faithful senator obliges.
Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” is a clever and much-needed plot, but I’m convinced more each day that the “70 to 80 percenters” of calm, rational people — in Washington and on the streets — amount to a much smaller percentage than Stewart and the non-crazies could hope for.
Reach Dustin at dustin.volz@asu.edu
