“For tonight, I announce the Rally to Restore Sanity,” a statement proclaimed by Jon Stewart on the September 16, 2010 episode of The Daily Show. In the following moments, the Rally to Restore Sanity would be accompanied by Jon Stewart’s devil’s advocate, Stephen Colbert and his “March to Keep Fear Alive”. Ultimately, these two events would be consolidated into the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” and would bring together tens of thousands of people at the National Mall in Washington D.C. on November 30, 2010. The purpose of the rally was to gather sensible people whose ideologies are not reflected in extremism of politics and the media. The following will describe my personal experience and analysis of the rally.
The Drexel Student Alliance of the United Nations Association, a student organization of Drexel University, arranged a bus to allow students to attend the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. I am president of this student organization and took advantage of the opportunity to attend the rally.
As we entered Washington DC, we were greeted with a great deal of traffic. This trend only continued as we approached the National Mall. In fact, our bus driver had trouble finding a place to drop us all off. But eventually, we were off to the rally.
Filled with excitement, we quickly walked towards the site of the rally. Our presence was quickly engulfed by chaos, which became a theme for the remainder of the rally.
The majority of the chaos was caused by the poorly planned facilities not being able to accommodate the vast unforeseen attendants. According to CBS News, the Jon Stewart rally attracted an estimated 215,000. The huge crowd overwhelmed the National Mall starting from the Capitol Building to the Washing Monument and overflowing into the closed off side streets. Personal space was a luxury many did not have. As I recall, people were posted on the top of trees and even porta potties. Sadly, there were too few large screens and loud speakers to project the rally effectively. Much of the crowd, including myself, could not see the stage or any video screens, while the audio was at a whisper. In fact, the huge turnout forced much of the audience to leave the rally early.
And so the rally began. The Roots kicked off the rally with an engaging musical performance. John Legend also joined in on the fun by performing with The Roots. The rally took a scientifically turn with Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, the host of Myth Busters. The Myth Busters humorously conducted various experiments interactively using the crowd as a sample size. For instance, one of their experiments was testing the characteristics of “the wave”.
After the opening sets had concluded, the rally then segued to the host. Jon Stewart embraced the crowd and began making fun of the logistics of a rally. Sarcastically, his staff attempted to count off the audience and identify specific demographics. Suddenly, Jon Stewart was interrupted by an all too familiar voice of Stephan Colbert. His face appeared on screen as he replicated his entrapment in a “fear bunker”. Eventually, Steven Colbert was convinced by the crowd to come out of hiding, but of course he emerged in a ridiculous fashion by replicating the Chilean miners’ rescue earlier this year.
The hosts carried on by exaggerating the differences of sanity and fear through an array featured guests and musical performers including 4troops, Jeff Tweedy, Mavis Staples, Kid Rock, Sheryl Crow, Ozzy Osbourne, Yusuf Islam, The O’Jays, Tony Bennett, Don Novello, Sam Waterston and Kareem Adbul-Jabbar. The diverse guest list appealed to essentially all demographics present. Furthermore, the guests’ performances symbolized the message of unity. For instance, Yusuf’s peace train was derailed by Ozzy Osbourne’s crazy train, but resolution came about when the two hosts boarded the O’Jays’ love train.
The hosts also presented medals of reasonableness and fear to further dramatize the difference of sanity and fear. Award winner Velma Hart justly earned a medal of reasonableness for the critical questions she directed at President Barack Obama in a town hall forum. Although Ms. Hart may not have agreed with the President on all the issues raised, she conducted a series of questions with an understood level of respect. On the other hand, medals of fear were issued to a number of news media outlets for barring all employees from attending the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. The news media outlets included ABC News, CBS News, The Associated Press, The New York Times and NPR. Award winners of both categories provided the audience with concrete examples of individuals and organizations who promote reason or fear.
The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was concluded with Jon Stewart’s speech. His powerful closing remarks highlighted the multiple messages embedded throughout the rally. Stewart acknowledged the current political and economic atmosphere is difficult, but not impossible. He related his message to the Holland Tunnel linking Manhattan and New Jersey. Each vehicle contains a driver who is a part of the diverse United States. Leading up to the Holland Tunnel, the vehicles are spread amongst multiple traffic lanes and ultimately must come to a consensus to file one by one through a single lane tunnel. Individuals may have contrasting views, but there is an understood level of courtesy which allows the vehicles to achieve their decisive goal and reach the other side of the tunnel. Although there may be individuals who “cut off” other vehicles, these instances are rare and do not represent the majority. The host went on to draw more conclusive parallels to the current state of affairs.
We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is—on the brink of catastrophe, torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done. But the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day.
As with most of the messages presented at the rally, this statement is direct to the working middle class: the average American who wakes up everyday committed to his or her job. This vital segment of the population is the driving factor, which allows the United States to continue to succeed.
On the contrary, this statement does not hold true in Washington D.C. or on cable television. The current political arena suffers from a great deal of partisanship. Most Americans do not share opinions solely with one political party. Politics have strayed away from their goal to serve the people and now have a general focus to serve their party instead. The battle is not so much between parties, but corruption versus non-corruption and extremism versus non-extremism. Both the political left and right are guilty of shutting down debates and creating conflict. It has proven difficult for the Obama administration to accomplish their projected goals due to the extent of partisanship.
Adding to our problem, most news media outlets create barriers for Americans to have a knowledgeable opinion on domestic issues. Media outlets are well versed in inspiring fear to attract high ratings to their program. Often, such programs will use controversial labels, such as terrorist and racist, to identify political figures when it is not appropriate. Fear propaganda is prevalent on nearly on all news programs, including Fox, MSNBC and CNN. The general consensus among news programs is that there is polarization in Washington. By having fear has as a featured part of news programs, major news media outlets continue to unjustly force the public to divide themselves amongst extreme democrats and republicans and in turn causes much of the political struggles that are present today.
Undoubtedly, the message of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear is valuable, but was the rally successful? A rally can be measured in three main ways: size, demographics and ramifications.
As stated above, the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear attracted an estimated 215,000 . Glenn Beck’s similar Restoring Honor rally had only 87,000 in attendance. Although Jon Stewart claims the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was not created to compete with the Restoring Honor rally, both demonstrations used similar tactics to promote and clearly Jon Stewart’s rally was more successful. Moreover, the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was broadcasted on Comedy Central and C-SPAN and drew 2,000,000 total viewers with an additional 570,000 live video streams on the internet.
To date, there has not been proper evaluation of the demography in attendance. Therefore, I must solely rely on my experience. Going through my photographs, I can identify by profiling that there was a crowd of mixed demographics. Young, old, liberals, conservatives, democrats, republicans, Caucasian, African American, Asian American, Latino American, heterosexuals, homosexuals and others were all represented. On the Drexel Student Alliance of the United Nation Association bus, undergraduates, graduates and faculty were present.
The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear purpose was to bring together moderates to combat the extremism of politics and the media. After the rally, Keith Olbermann, prominently featured in the fear video montage, decided to suspend his “Worst Person in the World” segment on Countdown with Keith Olbermann to avoid high tensions. He would later announce that the segment would return on November 17th as the “Not Really Worst Persons in the World." Political satire Bill Maher criticized the rally, as he believed insanity derives more so from the political right. However, most were mislead by Jon Stewart’s intentions. Stewart’s rally was not to simply point out increasing polarization in politics, as most news programs do. On November 11th, Jon Stewart appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to clarify the message of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, “The intention is to say we have all bought into that the conflict in the country is left and right…both side have their way of shutting down debate and the news networks have allowed these two sides to become the fight in the country.” The following day’s news headlines reflected that many people did not understand Jon Stewart’s message. As Bill Maher assumed, many people focused too much on the political left or right.
Although Jon Stewart was able to attract 215,000 attendants from a variety of demographics, he failed to successfully communicate his message during or after the rally. The flaw of the rally was the result of poor planning and execution. The National Mall was not equipped to accommodate the guests present. As a result, the majority of the audience did not feel as active participants of the rally. Also, the rally lacked cohesiveness due to the numerous amounts of guests and musicians. At times, guest and musicians captured the audience’s attention more than the message of the rally. Jon Stewart’s message was not definitive in the content of the rally. Stewart’s closing remarks could not effectively coincide with his message. I decided to attend the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear because I had true confidence that this event could inspire change in our political system and media outlets. Indeed, Mr. Stewart did make some waves in the politics and the news media in November, but disappointingly I have yet to witness any notable change today. Jon Stewart’s goal was a tremendously ambitious task, and some would argue to be guaranteed failure. He felt that after “12 years, I’d earned a moment to tell people who I was.” Jon Stewart has his opportunity at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, but unfortunately he was unsuccessful. Sorry Mr. Stewart.
Sources: Upon request
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