Rally to Restore Sanity
"Calmer than you are, dude" read one sign at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C. Saturday afternoon. It summed up the mood of the crowd—cool, comical, not at all worked up by any political message.
CBS News, which hired a helicopter to do an accurate count of the thousands of people who trooped Washington for the low-key affair put together by comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, estimated 210,000 people attended the event in the Washington Mall. (Fox News, naturally, put the numbers at less than one hundred thousand.)
However large the rally was, mainstream TV seemed stymied by the event's purpose. It wasn't really political, it wasn't just a comedy show (although Stewart and Colbert did their arch comedy shtick on a stage under the Capitol building, which was beamed on many Jumbotrons).
It wasn't a rock gig (although everyone from Sheryl Crow to John Legend to Cat Stevens - now Yusuf Islam - performed). NPR even declined to cover it, deciding it wasn't a real political event. Network execs scratched their heads. Everyone wanted to make something out of it that it wasn't.
The "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" (the Fear part comes from Colbert's hilarious attempts in his pseudo conservative persona to interject fear into the midterm election precess) was nothing more than a chance for the people in the political middle.
It was a chance for the actual forgotten Center, if you will, to say, "stop the extremism and listen to us for a change." All about the crowd signs and costumes made the statements loud and clear: "Don't' Tread on Anybody" (a clear answer to the case of a Rand Paul staffer stepping on small, female MoveOn volunteer's head). "Seniors for Sanity" followed by "Slightly Perturbed." "1.No Biting, 2.No Hitting, 3.No Kicking, Kindergarten Rules 101," "I Am Afraid of People Who Carry Signs at Rallies," "War Solved Hitler," "No One is a Communist and a Nazi," "I Spell-check My Political Rants," "I Have No Idea What I Am Doing Here," "Freedom Fries, Never Forget." "I'm Pretty Sure Nazi Germany Didn't Allow Rallies Like This At All (That Should Tell Us Something)," and "Tea Parties are for Little Girls and Mad Hatters." Following that theme were a few people dressed as Mad Hatters with tea bags dangling from their costumes.
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