Crowds Flock to Sanity Rally
The Washington Post reports:
On the morning of the joint rally by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, devoted followers of the two Comedy Central fake-news anchors made an early pilgrimage to the stage that framed the Capitol dome. The fake newsmen promise to restore sanity and preserve fear, but Saturday's event is most clearly poised to score strong television ratings and draw throngs to the Mall.
"I find it incredibly ironic," says Jim Neimeier, who drove to Washington from Wisconsin for the event, "that I had to come to a rally sponsored by a comedian to get at the truth."
Or at least a point of view diametrically opposed to the one expressed by Glenn Beck two months ago, when he staged a religiously themed "Restoring Honor" rally -- on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech -- with Sarah Palin on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
The "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" is billed as a correction to what Stewart, Colbert and their fans consider the extremism and dishonesty that have infected the American political system, especially the self-righteousness and fear-mongering they see in the right-leaning Beck and his employer, Fox News. The rally is scheduled to include musical interludes by such reliable openers as the Roots and professional rally balladeer Sheryl Crow. The event also will be emphatically covered by ratings and Web-traffic hungry mainstream media -- including The Washington Post -- that Stewart and Colbert vigorously mock.
But with its Capitol backdrop, exuberant crowd and clever placards, the Stewart-Colbert rally began to look like an ironic version of the political theater it sends up. At some point, do those mocking such hubris actually exhibit hubris?
"This is the most American thing I've ever done!" a young man screamed Saturday morning into a plastic megaphone, provided free by Comedy Central.
The megaphones, handed out with tea towels from the swag bags of volunteers, mixed with backpacks and folding chairs. Earnest signs read "I'm Not Afraid of Muslims, Tea Parties, Gays." Irreverent ones read "Support the Right to Arm Bears." Obama inauguration gear made it back out of the closet. On many posters reading "Hope," the visage of Stewart, not Obama, glared out.
The first fans started trickling to the Mall on Friday afternoon.
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