“If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.” — Jon Stewart, 30 October 2010, on the National Mall
The Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear), hosted by superstar comic news anchors Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert on the National Mall in Washington, DC, has drawn hundreds of thousands of people from across the country. Turnout was estimated at 300,000 beforehand, but images from the Mall show an edge-to-edge crowd filling the lawn from the stage at least as far back as the Washington Monument, meaning the total could well exceed 500,000 people.
Ostensibly a response to the falsely “non-partisan” rally held by Fox News personality Glenn Beck to “Restore Honor”, in which the conservative activist claimed it was time for white people to “reclaim the civil rights movement” and suggested the United States should profess itself to be a specifically “Christian” culture, today’s rally has turned into an opportunity for all sorts of groups to come together to oppose hate, violence and injustice.
The comic duo sang a folksy patriotic singalong that included the following ironic suggestions:
On my calendar, every day is the Fourth of July, if you cut me open, I bleed apple pie … I embody the spirit of the founders I know, ’cause I watch John Adams on the HBO …I love America and everyone in ‘er, I’d invite Sidney Poitier to dinner, I’d defend anything anybody says, except Juan Williams or Rick Sanchez … I’d marry Uncle Sam, if I could do it legally … From gay men who like football to straight men who like “Glee” … from the shores of Idaho to the shores of Kentucky, from New York to LA and all the in between … This is the greatest, strongest country in the world, there’s no one more American than me…
Kid Rock debuted a song about sanity, in which he sings about the common view that the problems of the world are too big to fix, that there’s just “screamin’ on the left, yellin’ on the right, and I’m just in the middle tryin’ to live my life” and “I can’t stop the war, shelter homeless, feed the poor”, adding that “I can’t change the world and make things better, but the least that I can do is care”. Jon Stewart, introducing the song, said Kid Rock played it when they spoke about his appearing and that it was so fitting, this rally had to be its live world debut.
At 2:22 pm, Jon Stewart was announced as the “keynote speaker” by his comic partner Steven Colbert, who then proceeded to interrupt the address. Colbert then asked to be “empodiumed” and the two entered into a debate about the nature of sanity and fear. Stewart quoted FDR, who said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, to which Colbert responded by quoting Nixon: “People react to fear, not to love; they don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true”.
He added that for this very reason he proposed to his wife by “hiding the ring inside a rabid badger”. Stewart accused the right wing of “always chumming the waters with fresh threats” and pointed out that people like Colbert are constantly terrified by fake threats like “corbumite” in bottled water, a made-up threat based on an episode of Star Trek. They then began to debate whether muslims are to be feared.
Colbert asked him to name one; Stewart suggested Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who came out to say that “a real friend understand that no matter what religious persuasion someone has, we’re all on the same team.” Colbert said Kareem’s “tolerance just drove the lane of my heart”, while Stewart explained that this was a perfect example of how individuals might be scary but their religious faith does not make them the model for all other people of that same faith.
Colbert suggested that robots are always terrifying, but Stewart suggested R2D2 was an example of one who was not. R2D2 then emerged and bleeped a few wise words to the crowd, only to hastily run over Stewart’s foot on his way to a date with a “blender that had its eye on you backstage”. Colbert brought out a massive papier-mache rendering of himself, and a media montage showing relentless fear-mongering, on everything from labor camps, to fundamentalism to illegal immigration to flip flops.
Glenn Beck got the last word on paradigmatic fear-mongering by saying “we better wake up soon” to which his guest answered, as if scripted “or we’ll wake up dead”. He played a second montage, again showing fear-mongering and inflammatory rhetoric, name-calling and unfounded claims. Stewart implied a TV remote could be used as “a weapon” to simply “change the channel to something that might be more appropriate”. And Colbert then played yet another media montage showing that hotel remotes are covered with dangerous bacteria and viruses.
The lesson was clear: as a forest sprite-bedecked John Oliver called on all the children of the world to cheer and to believe in order to restore the reasonable Jon Stewart back to life. The dead fear-monger Steven Colbert is then dragged off the stage, while thanking his puppet masters for their work, and Jon Stewart is left to address the crowd of hundreds of thousands who traveled to the nation’s capital to help “restore sanity”. He suggested “a moment for sincerity”:
“Some of you may have seen today as a clarion call for action, and some of you more ironic cats may have seen today as a [air quotes] clarion call [air quotes] for action [air quotes].” He added that this “was not a rally to ridicule people of faith … or to look down our noses at the heartland … or to suggest that times are not hard and we have nothing to fear; they are, and we do, but we live in hard times, not end times, and we can have animus and not be enemies. But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating between the two, broke.”
He blamed the 24-hour panic-inducing “conflictinator” for making it harder to solve problems as people working together. He suggested the media can use their influence to look at problems never before seen with a magnifying glass, or they can use their magnifying glass to set ants on fire, then spend weeks talking about the apparently random national epidemic of flaming ants.
In what may be the key phrase of his address, Stewart warned that “If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.” He suggested this leads to unnecessary divisions, extremist distortions and a dangerous inattention to detail, which undermines our ability to solve major problems as a nation.
He added that, “There are terrorists, and racists and Stalinists and theocrats, but those are titles that need to be earned, you must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Partiers, or between real bigots and Juan Williams, or Rick Sanchez, is an insult, not only to those people, but to the real racists themselves, who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate.” He added that “the inability to distinguish between terrorists from muslims makes us less safe, not more.”
“The press is our immune system; if it overreacts to everything, we actually get sicker,” he said, and warned that unless we have a healthy diet, and make sure to keep a healthy mindset both about what we ask of our media and what we reward our media for, our immune system may fail and our nation may become more vulnerable, not less, to the gathering threats of these difficult times.
He suggested the media depicts the American people as “in a fun-house mirror”, and suggests that if the media portrayed an accurate picture of the American people “as we are”, it might be possible to work together to solve major problems. Stewart added, with visible passion, that “We do! We work together to get things done EVERY DAMNED DAY!” He added that the only places where we don’t is “here [the Capitol building] and on cable TV”.
“Most Americans do not live their lives as Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives; most Americans live their lives more like someone who is just a little bit late to something they have to do, maybe something they don’t even want to do, but they do it anyway.” He showed a video of cars in traffic and narrated a list of possible combination of traits, beliefs, standards. He showed how they work together to merge, “you go, then I’ll go”, to get into a tunnel built by people working together to tame “a mighty river”, who probably “had their differences” but nonetheless worked together.
He adds that every now and then there’s a “selfish jerk” who cuts someone off, breaks the pattern of civility and mutual compromise, but that’s the rare individual, “and he’s not hired as an analyst” as a reward for his inhumanity to his fellow man. Stewart waxed poetic about the need to hold together to find the light and face our common perils. “The truth is,” he said, “there will always be darkness, and sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land; sometimes, it’s just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together.”
Visibly moved, Stewart ended his remarks saying that “Sanity has always been in the eye of the beholder, and to see you here today, and the kind of people that you are, has restored mine”, his voice cracking on the word mine. He then announced Tony Bennet, whom he embraced, who came out to sing “America the Beautiful”.
Throughout the rally, signs held up by attendees were telling, suggesting a revulsion against extremism and a demand for responsible, informed political rhetoric. One sign, held by someone dressed as a coyote, read “I am not a coyote; I am you,” a clear reference to Delaware Tea Party Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell, who recently ran ads saying “I’m not a witch… I’m you”. Other signs read “Don’t blame your hate on God” and “Everything in this sign is spelled correctly”.
One artful sign suggested there was a quality of ignorance about the Tea Party, proclaiming support for the “Mr. T. Party” with the slogan “pity the fools”. Stewart himself sought to bring attention to irresponsible media distortions early and often, saying “It really doesn’t matter what we say or do here today; it matters what is reported about what we say or do here today.” His message was clear: responsible citizenship requires a respect for truth, an interest the facts and a willingness to work with others.” One sign helped sum up the message of the day, reading “Civil is Sexy”.