For comedians Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, scheduling a political rally on Halloween Eve may have been a deliberate prank. I suspect however that it was an unwitting joke.
In any case, I could not resist previewing it in the spirit of the occasion as follows:
Happy Halloween!
Trick:
Comedian Steven Colbert leading a march in Washington, DC today aimed at inciting even more irrational fear in people like the angry, misguided folks who comprise the Tea Party.
Or Treat:
Comedian Jon Stewart holding a rally on the Mall in Washington, DC today aimed at restoring the sanity that elected politicians and their wannabe replacements have driven out of American politics.
… Or both:
Colbert and Stewart joining heads to do one big gig consisting of the ironic and irreverent political schtick they do on their TV shows. Oh, there should be some pretty good music too.
Enjoy!
(Happy Halloween! The iPINIONS Journal, October 30, 2010)
As things turned out it was “both”. And since the vast majority of the people who turned out are undoubtedly fans of their shows, I suspect more than a few of them were probably wondering why they went to all the trouble just to see a rehash of what they see on TV most weeknights.
I’ve only seen a few episodes of Stewart’s The Daily Show and Colbert’s The Colbert Report. Yet even I was struck with tedium after watching their schtick for just a few minutes.
Nevertheless, it would be remiss of me not to cite a few highlights:
In no particular order, I found the appearance by Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) to sing his 1970s cult hit Peace Train truly inspiring … at least initially. For Stewart and Colbert made a mockery of his appearance and of his song: It started with Stewart introducing him as Joseph and refusing to even mention his last name. Frankly, Stewart came across in this awkward moment like a Tea Partier who was being forced to introduce a radical Islamist and was just doing all he could to make the SOB sound more Jewish than Muslim.
Then Stewart and Colbert defiled Yusuf’s peace anthem by interrupting it to bring the prince of darkness, Ozzy Osborne, on stage to perform – with all of the cacophony and chaos that invariably entails. Why they invited Yusuf to be the butt of this mini rocky horror show, I do not know.
Other notable highlights include Sam Waterston, of Law & Order fame, delivering a dramatic rendition of Colbert’s poem of fear, and the O’Jays singing their signature Love Train – thankfully without Stewart and Colbert interrupting in a vain attempt to provide more comic relief.
That said, Stewart easily redeemed himself with his closing remarks. Here are a few self-explanatory excerpts courtesy of C-SPAN:
This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear–they are, and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus, and not be enemies. But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke.
The country’s 24-hour, political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder… If we amplify everything, we hear nothing…
Just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe, not more…
We hear every damned 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. The truth is, we do! We work together to get things done every damned day! The only place we don’t is here (in Washington) or on cable TV…
And the truth is 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.
Amen brother! And I’ll take Jon Stewart’s America (with its sanity tempered by humor – no matter how stale) over Glen Beck’s America (with its wrath-of-God obsession) any day.
Apropos of this, Stewart made a point of declaring that the success of his rally would be measured by two criteria: the “size and color” of the crowd.
But truth be told, the ironic fact is that the lack of black faces made both rallies look “inadequate” in these respects. And this I suspect is because the people who tune in to watch Stewart, Colbert, and Beck on TV are 99% white.
All the same, Stewart’s fans are hailing a CBS report which determined – by comparing aerial images of both rallies – that approximately 215,000 people attended Stewart’s rally; whereas only 87,000 attended Beck’s. These numbers are backed up by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority which reportedly counted 825,437 passenger trips on October 30, the date of Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, compared to 510,020 on August 28, the date of Beck’s rally to Restore Honor.
But I shall leave it to you to make whatever you will of the farce inherent in these two white boys comparing size and color for bragging rights in this fashion….
Related commentaries:
Glen Beck rally…
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