I admit — I wept when Jon Stewart announced “The Rally to Restore Sanity.” Since entering college, this girl, who once thought there were no such things as “stupid people,” had grown into the kind of person burdened with very real nausea at a glimpse of Fox News. Or any news program, for that matter. Any message board, too. Any public political dialogue that descended into arrogance and insanity — and so many do. The reaction frustrated me, and when Stewart called for a rally to encourage reasonableness and respect in public discourse, I felt my anxieties might be soothed.
My boyfriend and I traveled to Washington, D.C., for the rally. We arrived home Sunday with alarmingly swollen feet and legs. I’d hardly slept in three days. My head was throbbing. And for what? The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear (as it had been re-dubbed after Stewart’s cause joined arms with cohort Stephen Colbert’s “March to Keep Fear Alive”) was an utter disappointment. The usual sharp revelry of “The Daily Show” had been replaced with hackneyed sketch comedy and not-so-fresh interplay between Colbert and Stewart’s on-air personalities. These scenes were prefaced and punctuated by a stream of throwaway celebrity guests and suddenly made somehow relevant by an honestly heartfelt, too-brief speech by Stewart — something I would have been happy to hear states away.
The truth is, I wasn’t even on site for Stewart’s address. I was blocks away by that time, waddling at top speed to the National Press Club where, I’d been informed, my uncanny likeness to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow had landed me a front row seat for a post-rally Q-and-A with Stewart and Colbert.
I attempted to devise an appropriate question for at least one of these men promoting civility and reason. But, for some time, all I could come up with was: “Really, sirs, was it reasonable for me to drag my butt all this way from Central Florida, share a cramped bus with the world’s most obnoxious singing/cursing rabbi only to slog through a crowd of what seemed mostly upper-middle-class and wealthy white folks in order to attend this well-intentioned but ultimately sloppy sham of a historical event?”
I instead asked Stewart something about comedic boundaries. And, wonderfully enough, it was his and Colbert’s answers to a handful of other questions that gave me what I needed to paint this experience as something worth my time. Both seemed genuinely fulfilled by their efforts, genuinely committed to what they had attempted to do with this rally and genuinely moved by the fact that so many (estimates are upwards of 250,000 people in attendance) chose to follow them on this journey, no matter how ill-planned or ill-fated. At one point during the conference, Stewart said: “I’m really proud that I’m a comedian. I think it’s hard. I think it’s hard to distill your most valued thoughts into comedy and to let things that you feel strongly about be the subtext for what you create.”
I have always agreed with that sentiment, which is why comics like Stewart have always been my rock gods. Comedians carry the muscle and charm necessary to get people swallowing and processing prickly ideas — it’s the spoonful of sugar making the medicine go down.
Fact is, nothing like this event had been attempted by performers like these, or anyone really. This whole shebang was developed and performed by people whose work and existence continues to give so many near-cynics (like me) real hope.
No piece of popular art is perfect if and when it first presents controversial material to the masses. Lord knows “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was full of problems. But if we acknowledge these less-than-perfect works as the precursor to real debate, it doesn’t matter how polished they are — just get your foot in that door.
I still believe in the idea, as Stewart pointed out in his public address, that “these are hard times, not end times” and that if “we amplify everything, we hear nothing.” What’s more, I believe in community support for those brilliant comedians who perform deceptively valuable, challenging snake-charming acts.
Like in some huge, unnecessarily lavish wedding thrown by an otherwise lovable couple, there’s good reason to believe that the individuals who invited me to this rally will never know I was there. But I feel, all in all, that I went because it’s the right thing to do. You support the people you love when they take risks, when they make an effort.
Ironically enough, that sentiment might not always sound pragmatic. But at least I say it genuinely, purposefully, respectfully, softly and without waving around some very big stick. What more could gurus like Stewart and Colbert ask for?
Rebecca Bauman is a graduate student in the English program.
