davis presence at the Rally to Restore Sanity

[thespian.livejournal.com]

I'm curious who else from DSLJ is going to be heading down to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear?

(I'm taking Worldwide to NYC ($10), catching the HuffPost Sanity Bus there (free), and then returning on Monday on JetBlue ($7). My method of achieving Sanity is probably really insane. Especially since I sprained my ankle really badly 10 days ago. But cheap!)

Comments

[thespian.livejournal.com]

actually, on the official rally forum, they've been pretty discouraging to the far left, too (especially so to the legalize pot people and to anyone who wants to put the word 'fuck' on a sign). But HuffPo has always seemed like....well, I'm from Canada, and really, they're a *smidge* to the right of our Liberal Party, and nothing I'd call far left.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

I can't really think of a single politically charged issue that HuffPo is not firmly in the left. The site was founded as a foil to the Drudge Report. They do try to put up a bit more of a journalistic approach, which is why I called them very liberal and not extreme :)

I know what this thing is paying lip service to, but that's what either side does whenever such rallies occur. They want to keep the vulgarity and anarchist types out to not hurt their credibility. This is a liberal rally, or at the very least an anti Tea Party rally. I don't necessarily think that's such a bad thing, but saying it's anything else is a bit disingenuous.

[cos]

I think you've misread it somewhat. It will draw a crowd with a liberal lean, because Stewart & Colbert's audiences have a liberal lean. However, Stewart has repeatedly used examples of extremes from left & right when promoting the rally, so his message is clear, and your spin on it is not what his message is. Really.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

Your spin is just parroting their spin. It doesn't take a lot to read between the lines and to see a marketing package for what it is.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

he started setting this up 4 years ago, then.

[cos]

It sounds like you "know" what it is, and what the rally's main host says about it is irrelevant. Okay, then.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I think it's a call for reality, and reality does have a well-known liberal bias.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

So says us liberals :) I think others might disagree is all.

And just to keep this as the last comment. Glenn Beck recently had a rally on the Mall. This rally was -- as far as I know -- the reason John Stewart organized this one (and kudos to him for it).

This is what organizers of the previous rally noted:

> the "Restoring Honor" rally isn't about politics. It's to pay tribute to America's military personnel and others "who embody our nation's founding principles of integrity, truth and honor." (I don't think this is from Glenn Beck himself, but is from a CNN article on his rally quoted from organizers)

All I'm trying to say is all rallies such as this are political by their very nature. AND, whenever a group--left or right--wants to appeal to or sway more moderates, they will build their messages around how this is not political, this is no longer about left or right, this is about sanity, patriotism, building a better future, etc. This is pretty basic political marketing.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I am a fan of this upcoming rally. I'm just calling it how I see it, for whatever that's worth.

[cos]

> This rally was -- as far as I know -- the reason John Stewart organized this one

Well, not really, though sort of. Glenn Beck, as you know, spouts a lot of extreme hyperbole, and Jon Stewart mocks it frequently. So definitely he is playing this up as a counter in that sense: not left vs. right, but calm and reasonable and fun vs. scary and extreme.

However, that's not "the reason" in the sense of having caused Stewart to organize it. The reason is that a few people on reddit commented about how great it would be if Stephen Colbert held a rally on the mall in his satirical persona, like the speech he gave at the 2006 White House Correspondents Association dinner.

Then, someone on reddit - who had seen a couple of these comments - had a dream about such a speech, woke up kinda on fire about that, and posted about it ... and the post caught on because it was really an idea whose time had come. It got thousands of votes very quickly, hundreds of thousands of hits, a web site was made, Colbert referred to it on his show, reddit took up Colbert's fundraising challenge of $500K for DonorsChoose, etc. etc. So the cause was that this was something people really wanted, reddit catalyzed that and showed Colbert and Stewart that people wanted it, and reddit got them to realize they ought to do it.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Oh PSHAW! :-) This is no more about reality than any other mainstream centrist silliness. This is about trying to put a band aid on yuppie/suburbanite geek middle class boredom, depression, and angst that stems from the fact that people feel stuck working for someone else doing lame jobs that mostly make the world a worse place.

This is the angry young man (and a few token women) syndrome of modern pop culture starting to come out of the closet.

No one there is going to be overheard saying anything as liberal and reality based as, "The reality is that we don't actually know what to do, but we do believe that everyone has something valuable to add to the discussion and we'd like to hear about what you care about most in life, and we want to support you in helping make that happen."

Instead, there will be more of the same old same old blaming the other guy and trying to pretend that they know all the answers.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

"It is in fact, not a political rally. This is for the people that are too busy, that have jobs and lives and are tired of their reflection in the media as being a divided country and a country that’s ideological and conflicted and fighting, this is for those people." - Jon Stewart.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity what does he, and you, think will be accomplished by this rally? Will the country no longer be divided? Will these people no longer be too busy and stuck in jobs they don't really love and suddenly be able to do the things that they really want to do (change the world, or whatever)? Will they stop being tired of hearing other people's opinions about the world that they don't happen to agree with? Something else?

[ethanfield.livejournal.com]

It will probably do about as much for its cause as Glenn Beck's August rally did, or the Progressive one two weeks ago did. That is to say, not much, but it possibly makes the people who go there (or watch it) feel like there are other people who feel the way they do.

[turil.livejournal.com]

No this is a centrist rally, not a liberal one. Stewart and Colbert are firmly average Democrats when it comes to politics, not Greens.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

Democrats are only viewed as centrists by extremists :)

[turil.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily, most centrists call themselves Democrats as well. But yes, I'm actually a liberal, which is the extreme end of the political spectrum, with the most protection for individual rights and freedoms.

[ethanfield.livejournal.com]

I think there's been a lot of unfortunate conflation - including by the hosts themselves - of dialogue tone with political position. I originally got the impression that this rally wasn't centered on a particular political position, but on promoting more sober, rationale discussion rather than mindless ranting.

The problem is, it's easy to jump from there to saying, "There are ranting loonies on the far right and far left, and therefore, sober conversationalists in the political center." I think that's wrong on a bunch of fronts - I know angry ranting centrists, and I know gentle engaging progressives and conservatives.