This weekend is when The Colbert Report has its "March to Keep Fear Alive" and The Daily Show has its "Rally to Restore Sanity." Both are parody-laden responses to the crazy-ass crap going on across the USA as the midterm elections grow near.
Unfortunately, my real fear is very much alive that Jon Stewart is far too late to restore sanity to this nation. That ship has sailed. The rampant dumbfuckery plaguing our country in the form of bigotry, racism, hatred, ignorance, deceit, hypocrisy, selfishness, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, incompetence, and greed... it's all rapidly approaching the point of no return. Even worse, any form of actual sanity is readily attacked by people too stupid to even understand what they're attacking.
So good luck with that...
And the stupid shall inherit the earth.
Luckily it will be a world of their making, so at least they'll be getting what they deserve.
UPDATE: Well, the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" has just concluded. For the most part, I thought it was pretty bad. It wasn't funny. It wasn't even entertaining. I was bored throughout the entirety of the event, and thought the screaming interaction between Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert was embarrassing. There were glimmers of hope... like when Yusuf (aka Cat Stevens) and Ozzy Osbourne hit the stage, but it was all destroyed when Stewart and Colbert went into some kind of mock music battle. Nothing seemed to come together, and a everything seemed so staged and pointless. I guess you had to be there?
HOWEVER... the speech at the end by Jon Stewart made the entire ordeal worthwhile. It was inspiring. He truly managed to put everything into perspective and diminish the fear-mongering assholes that are ruining this country. I hope that a transcript or video recap of the speech is posted, because it's well worth a look.
I love comments! However, all comments are moderated, and won't appear until approved. Are you an abusive troll with nothing to contribute? Don't bother. Selling something? Don't bother. Spam linking? Don't bother.
PLEASE NOTE: My comment-spam protection requires JavaScript... if you have it turned off or are using a mobile device without JavaScript, commenting won't work. Sorry.
Atom Entries Feed Comments Feed
Was an article in the paper this week about a town in Indiana having to close a children’s resource center for disabled kids. The staff, out of concern, suggested parents take their kids to a shelter because they can’t help them any more. Staff was in tears, parents were outraged. It’s out of funding.
Welcome to smaller government.
Nobody sees the need to provide assistance for anybody else in society… until it comes time for them to need the assistance themselves. Then it’s always “why is the government failing us?” Sad. But typical.
Oh my! Well said.
I suppose I would disagree about the entire event ending up “pretty bad.” I suppose it all depends on what one was to expect by attending/viewing it.
As someone lucky enough to be local, I attended with my family. I had a feeling before I even left this morning that I probably wouldn’t be 100% sure of what would be happening. I had seen the “leaked” schedule of events, and I was pretty sure that the entire event would be, in essence, a performance. That it would be a live Jon Stewart / Stephen Colbert concert with special guests. Would there be a political message involved? Sure. But was this a true answer to Glenn Beck’s rally months earlier? Hardly. I took it in the same way that I view the Daily Show and the Colbert Nation: informative, yet satirical.
So I set out to play a part in the satire they were putting on. The signs we made poked fun at the slogans we had seen on partisan signs from past rallies. We stayed on “message” — that this was about being moderate and reasonable. And not taking ourselves too seriously.
Most people got it the same way we did. As we squeezed into that section of the National Mall, the time spent waiting for the festivities to begin were used by looking at everyone else’s signs and taking pictures. I loved the fact that people were photographing ours. (People loved my “My sign is mispelled” sign.) I also liked the array of silly signs with obscure references. I especially loved the “Donna Martin Graduates!” one we saw on the way in.
Many participants used it as a partisan rally to blow off steam about the TEA Party. Glenn Beck. FOX News. Some had signs about gay rights, women’s health rights and taxation. That was okay as well. But as much as it was a left-leaning crowd, I don’t think the purpose was to mobilize action at the polls. There were some other groups who latched on to this event to do that, but the event itself didn’t have that purpose.
As for the banter between Stewart and Colbert — I think it went overboard a bit. It simply felt like we were straining to watch the big screens to see a live version of their respective TV shows (and straining to hear it). Most of the musical performances were forgettable (with the notable exception being “Peace Train”).
What intrigued me was that this was the “rally” that was okay to NOT take seriously — which let people do the silly things they couldn’t get away with at, for instance, a more serious one. Adam and Jamie from Mythbusters made that apparent with their warm-up (measuring the time it took for the wave to get from the front to the back and having everyone in attendance jump at the same time to see if it registered seismically). A bit weak, but still a reminder that this was not something to take so seriously.
Finally, I think it was a wonderful experience because of the people who were there. It was jam-packed, but (at least in our section) everyone was friendly and nice. It was cool to share the experience with so many people who shared similar attitudes about the event that we had.
His speech at the end — wonderful. I loved the analogy.
Like I said, I guess you had to be there.
I can absolutely see how being there in the middle of it all would be a memorable experience, but sitting in front of a television watching it unfold was “pretty bad.” They tried too hard to be funny, and it just fell flat to me. Maybe I was expecting too much since I love both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report? I dunno. The speech at the end had me hoping they would have not tried so hard to be an entertainment extravaganza that didn’t work (at least not on television).
I fell asleep halfway through.
I read some news articles about it and it sounded like it was a mish-mash of various people countering the Tea Party Beckfest from August. But with correctly spelled signs and more intelligence.
Reading Shiny’s comment above, it sounds like you did have to be there because what I saw on TV and on the web didn’t translate as well (as you stated very well in your reply to Shiny).
I still find it odd that two comedians are more logical than career politicians. But yet we have a sound voice in Al Franken, so maybe it’s a trend that needs more attention.