Although we weren’t in D.C. this weekend, we can imagine the scent of Sharpie and calm hum of sane rally-goers that filled the streets of the nation’s capital Saturday at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, hosted by Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
The rally, meant to mock Glenn Beck’s August Restoring Honor rally and the Tea Party movement, was also about taking a break from blame shifting and name-calling to focus on honing our discretion between social and political consumption. Any comparison between Beck’s rally and Saturday’s rally is essentially moot. According to CBS, the D.C. rally drew a crowd of 215,000 people; Beck’s Restoring Honor rally only saw a crowd of about 87,000. But the media coverage it received made up for any deficiency in warm bodies.
Crazy rallies get crazy attention. But silly signs don’t necessarily mean we’re going to take the Rally to Restore Sanity as a joke, even if it was a one-night movement that mocked the unfortunately regular Tea Party rallies, which have become a gathering of “Spaghetti O” moments and a lot of post-rally damage control media.
It wasn’t what Stewart or Colbert were saying at the rally that blew up the blogosphere, but the signs that the attendees created for the event. The smart satire we saw picketers displaying this weekend may be comparable to stooping to the very likeness of rally ignorance, but the irony was golden. As one sign at the rally stated, “people who use hyperbole should be shot.”
In the closing remarks, Stewart said his sanity was restored by seeing the turnout of people who are tired of outrageous media coverage of a political party that insults our very institution, and also by the symbolic motion for swapping extremism for something else.
This certainly won’t be the last dig at the tea partiers, and this event may have been over publicized, as many reviews came back disappointed, but, really, who cares? The point of this weekend may just be the ironic realization that reactionary rallies don’t do anything to the political system (other than maybe back up the streets of our representatives in D.C.).
The ideologies and intentions of the rally bordered the political and social implications. For example, we may not all agree on gay marriage, but the foundation of how we relate to one another relies on a very basic set of humane rules and logic.
These sentiments were reciprocated by signs that stated: “Somewhat irritated about extreme outrage.”
While some rally goers tried to play down their reaction to the Tea Party as “somewhat irritated” or “moderately upset,” this is a little indicative of our approach to government and a guise of lethargy.
Whether the rally attendees were commenting on the futility of picketing by writing “Words on a sign,” or displaying a photo of Stephen Colbert as Hitler to mock the Tea Party signs of Obama, or were Team Sanity or Team Fear, one rally sign got it right: “It’s a sad day when our politicians are comical, and I have to take our comedians seriously.”
