Colbert & Stewart's Coffee Party
We've heard a lot about Tea Party fury. Those at the Stewart/Colbert rally are an equally fed up voting bloc. Except that they aren't angry, just ... bemused.
We've heard a lot about Tea Party fury in the lead-up to the mid-term elections. Over the weekend, I spent time with another, equally fed up voting bloc. But these people aren't angry. They're just ... bemused.
The event was Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear," a comedy and music jamboree on the Washington Mall. It was billed as non-partisan - with Jon Stewart playing the role of "sane" centrist jousting with faux-blowhard faux-fearmongering Stephen Colbert. But when I spoke to people in the crowd, it became clear that this was a solidly left-wing event. Not so much pro-Democrat - these folks are too jaded for party politics - as anti-Tea Party.
The Rally attracted more than 200,000 participants - three times what Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin got when they played the same venue to much Godly, right-wing fanfare a month ago. All those bodies would seem to translate into a mass political movement. But appearances can be deceiving: Most of the people I saw on The Mall aren't engaged in politics as most of us would define it. It's more like cultural commentary.
The signs on display said it all.
One trio at the rally dressed up in an Alice in Wonderland motif, and had a placard that read "I stopped having Tea Parties when I was 7!" There also was "Palin/Voldemort 2012," "I like tea - and you're kind of ruining it," "America, not Americurr," and "Free hugs! (from a militant atheist with a gay agenda)."
A lot of the signs didn't even pretend to have any substantive political meaning- but rather were postmodern meta-jokes playing on the theme of protest, anger and simple-mindedness. These included "If your beliefs fit on a sign, think harder," "I'm quite miffed," "It's the end of the month as we know it," "Gay without any real agenda," "DON'T kill all humans," "I like protesting," "I may disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not HITLER," "Spell-checkers for piece," "It's a complex issue," "I'm mad as Hell, ... and eventually likely to do something about it," "There is nothing to fear but fear itself ... AND ZOMBIE HITLER," "Feelin' ok about things," "I'm at a rally - this is a sign," "That's an interesting perspective - thanks for sharing!" and "Waffles are awesome."
In other cases, the signs were almost too clever and precious. One fellow had a placard displaying a graphing of the hyperbolic function f(x) = 1/x, along with the words "Hyperbola! Not hyperbole!" His friend has a t-shirt with another common math function, along with the slogan "Science: It works, bitches."
The people holding these signs - call them the Coffee Partiers - were superannuated versions of the clever high school kids who hung out in the corner of the cafeteria reading Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams ("The answer is 42!" read one of the signs on Saturday), and making fun of jocks. Now they've grown up and they're making fun of Glenn Beck.
Tea Partiers say they're angry about the state of American politics. But they at least embrace the basic forms of modern political expression - simple sloganeering, earnest appeals to dogma, scathing demagoguery. The Coffee Party crowd, on the other hand, is disgusted with all that. They are angry at America's anger, and are reciprocating with irony and cleverness. They detest Glenn Beck, but could never embrace their own equally shrill anti-Beck. That's why satirists such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are natural Coffee Party leaders, even if they cast themselves as non-partisan.
In Saturday's National Post, David Frum wrote about the GOP's growing dependence on older voters, who are more politically active than their children. What I saw on Saturday helps explain this trend: A young generation brought up on Comedy Central, many of whom think Beck and the whole media dynamic he represents is one big joke, it going to be hard to lure to the polls. "FOX News, you are making my mom afraid of EVERYTHING," read one sign that crystallized this generational divide.
Irony and humor are great for making people laugh, and as an outlet for political disaffection - but they are no match for anger and earnestness when it comes to getting out the vote. When Wednesday morning comes, a lot of very clever people are going to be crying in their coffee.
