Alex Kronman

November 5, 2010

The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was held this past Saturday on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The brainchild of Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart, host of the Daily Show, and Steven Colbert, host of the Colbert Report, the rally was meant for those Americans not represented amidst our divisive political culture.

Stewart and Colbert, emissaries of sanity and fear respectively, called on the “busy majority” comprised of those who “think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn’t be the only ones that get heard” to the Woodstock of our generation, albeit one with “the nudity and drugs replaced by respectful disagreement.” And by god, they came.

Estimates have settled at about 215,000 people, slightly below Colbert’s estimate of 6 billion but impressive nonetheless. The rally, held on Oct. 30, fell over block break and I was lucky enough to attend. So, as Thursday rolled around, a few friends and I flew to Washington, D.C. Quite a few people were en transit to attend the rally and that number certainly grew as we left the Springs and switched planes in Minneapolis.

Once in the Capitol, the mood was electric. Even though this was my first D.C. rally, it struck me how utterly transformed the city was. Armchair liberals were freed from the confines of their natural habitats and roamed the streets sporting “sanity” pins. It was obvious too that everyone was on his or her best behavior. No one wanted to reflect poorly on the collective mission.

As rally day began, the masses descended upon the mall. In the Metro and on the streets there was no pushing or shoving – there was just an incredible happiness and politeness. Hell, to get a city to behave like that is an impressive feat in and of itself.

As much as Jon Stewart and the Daily Show are held up as the only way young people get the news, Stewart knows what he is and what he does well. Many, in anticipation of the rally, saw this as the breaking point in which Stewart would somehow cease to be a comedian and be reborn as a political leader. He played the role of media critic rather than media replacement and, as a comedian with a half hour on Comedy Central four nights a week, that’s exactly what he should have done. Stewart has been clear about keeping his distance from the media and political establishments and he honored that at the rally. That being said, I have a feeling a Stewart/Colbert ticket in 2012 would be met with excitement by those in attendance.

Anyway, the rally. It kicked off with the guys from Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel conducting “experiments” on the crowd. From where I was standing, telling people to simultaneously jump up and down through a not quite loud enough PA system got lost on a crowd hungry for some good old-fashioned sanity.

Next on the bill came The Roots and John Legend performing together to really get things started. The stage served as a very intentional frame of the Capitol. It worked incredibly well as a backdrop for everyone on stage during the rally. Other musical acts included 4troops with the national anthem, Jeff Tweedy and Mavis Staples with some unmemorable indie stuff, Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow with an incredibly overly simplistic song about political division. Tony Bennett performed a rousing God Bless America that I felt was easily the most powerful and moving musical performance of the day.

Rounding out the impressive list of musicians at the rally were Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens), Ozzy Osbourne and The O’Jays. A strange musical trio you say? Together, they provided one of the rally’s absolute high points.

Stewart brought out Islam, after decades of not performing, to sing “Peace Train,” his 1971 classic. Not to be outdone, Colbert interrupted the performance by bringing out Ozzy to perform “Crazy Train.” In the spirit of compromise they agreed that a “Love Train” was a train they could both get on.

Aside from music, the Rally to Restore Sanity also featured Don Novello reprising his portrayal of Father Guido Sarducci made famous on Saturday Night Live in the 70’s. He delivered the benediction and used the opportunity to ask god, so long as he had god’s attention, to create a sign so we’d know which religion was the right one. That’s definitely something I don’t expect happened at Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the mall in August. Or, well, perhaps it did, but during Beck’s event god probably answered.

Sam Waterston of Law and Order fame gave a dramatic reading of a poem by Steven Colbert sending up media alarmism. During a mock debate (or edition of “Formidable Opponent” for those Colbert fans) between Stewart and Colbert, Stewart used Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as evidence of there being a difference between Muslims and terrorists.

Apart from the outpouring of celebrities involved with the rally, the true meat of the show was the guys everyone came to see – Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. Their rapport is fantastic and their unique senses of humor offered a great one-two punch.

A question Jon Stewart brought up towards the end of the rally is one a multitude of people have attempted to answer in the past few days: what was this? It’s a question I’ve been thinking about and I’m not sure I’d understand it had I not been there.

At first I felt a little cheated. I wanted a little more. I got a great show but somehow I felt there’d be a stronger political statement, something to dull the Election Day sting we all knew was right around the corner. Knowing I, or someone else, would be covering the rally for the Catalyst, I began to think of a phrase that might capture how I was feeling. I landed upon yearning for “a little more Cornell West and a little less Kid Rock.” Apart from that being nowhere near as clever as I thought at the time, I must admit I think I was mistaken.

By far and away, the best part of the Rally to Restore Sanity was right at the end. For 15 minutes or so, Stewart paused for a little seriousness. He didn’t attack the right, the Tea Party or any individual; he went deeper than that. His basic thesis was this: “The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything, we actually get sicker, and perhaps eczema.”

Thinking about it in terms of positives and negatives, the rally was a fantastic experience. Just being a part of it was uplifting. Many are attacking the rally’s substance, notably David Carr of the New York Times. Some are saying it didn’t hit the radical right hard enough, some are saying it wasn’t political enough, and many are saying that by going after the media rather than political extremists, Stewart was targeting the messengers while letting the message get away scot free.

I don’t think that is a competent interpretation. I think the Rally to Restore Sanity made a better point than we’ve seen in a long time. It would have been easy to say that political discourse in contemporary America has been corroded to a dangerous extreme. Stewart went further than that; he offered a solution.

Politicians can’t really be expected to engage in substantial discourse because they have no incentive to. They can get away with all sorts of horrible things because no one is there to call them out when they misstep. We can’t solve problems in this country not because we don’t have capable leader, but because our way of understanding the issues is broken. “The country’s 24-hour politico-pundit, perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems,” Stewart said, “but its existence makes solving them that much harder.”

He brought people together and he offered a solution. A broken discourse and endless fighting is a symptom of a larger problem—our mass media has given up the search for truth and taken up the search for profits. We haven’t lost the essence, the ability, to fix our problems and create an inclusive America for the next generation. We have, however, forgotten how to communicate. It’s reason and sanity that are lacking from a national conversation.

In that environment it truly is the loudest voices that get the most attention. In that environment, “yes we can” has morphed into apathy and fiscal responsibility has devolved into fear. Gray area and doubt simply don’t sell and don’t get ratings. The challenges we face are not easy but they are not insurmountable. As Stewart said, “We live in hard times, but we do not live in end times.”

Progress is impossible when our framework doesn’t reflect reality. By calming down and at least understanding that working together is possible, even just for a few hours, Stewart has helped us think intelligently about the issues we face.

However, this was not a call to action. As Stewart said, “Your presence was all I wanted.” Or rather, he was asking for a little thought before we act. The Rally to Restore Sanity was not a clarion call to follow Stewart and Colbert. He wasn’t asking for anything but a pause. He didn’t attempt to make this about himself and he didn’t have enough of an ego to think that he was the face of a political movement.

Had he asked for more than our presence, it was his for the taking but by NOT doing so he forged something deeper and more meaningful—an inspired way to re-imagine how we the people manage our country.

It’s a mistake to quantify what happened that day. By leaving it for what it was, we got something more.