24 hours after sanity was restored
October 31, 2010 | 5:04 pm24 hours after the Rally to Restore Sanity, I have to say, I’ve had a blast watching cable channels completely IGNORE the rally (Bless you Howard Kurtz from CNN for redeeming your network!). Heaven forbid News Networks should tear themselves away from recycling candidate speeches, exit polls and political experts standing firmly on their over-polarized side (or the hourly interjection of fear through reminding us of the bombs found in recent packages… coincidence this happened 4 days before elections? i think not!)… heaven-forbid you should go off message for 2 minutes to report something that may *gasp* be critical of you!
Yes, yes, i hear you already, i know, networks and news shows DID show parts of the rally, yes, they showed the music and mocked how the rally was really about nothing… but where are those experts analysts when it comes to paraphrasing Jon Stewart’s closing message?
I also had a blast reading the reviews and following the twitter feeds too. Two comments here:
- For the love of all that’s holy, Twitterers! please! stop comparing numbers of attendees to those who showed up to Glenn Beck’s rally, it’s an insult to us and goes against the entire concept of sanity Jon Stewart was on about yesterday, don’t you see? The whole point is NOT to hype this up, not to obsess or get competitive, but just to appreciate it for what it was, even if only 1,000 people had showed up
- I do have to point to this review from someone called Z on TV, that had me laughing my sights off: i’d paraphrase but i don’t think i’d be doing him justice. He’s a reporter, so he felt scorned by Jon Stewart’s criticism of the 24-hour news cycle, and goes about proving how Jon Stewart is just plain “wrong”… uh, ok, thanks for that Z, glad to see journalism objectivity is alive and well!
I did want to mention 1 point. Z says that Stewart’s tirade was an insult to journalists who risk their lives every day reporting from war zones and endangered areas. Z, if you raised your nose up for a second from those Reese Peanut Cups you bought as a result of the advertisement you’re so angry was shoved in your face, you’d realize it wasn’t the journalists Stewart was insulting, it was the networks and the way they SPIN the news that those brave journalists bring home.
So in order to restore peace and sanity in my own head, I want to thank Eddie Izzard for pointing me to this article that explains it way better than I ever could.
My 2 latest blog posts have actually just been me trying to get to the point i’ve been trying to make as a result of the rally and the way i see the current political process. But i’ll spare you a never-ending post and just start a new one that i’ll post tomorrow.
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Great post…and a good reminder to catch up on what I missed. Unfortunately, I wasn’t around a TV or computer to catch the rally live, but I had been watching Jon Stewart plug it on his show for awhile, and I think he was right on to give this a shot. I think one of his most redeeming features is that he doesn’t take himself (or his critics) so seriously…which will obviously help him in the end. Of course, there’s always the debate about whether he, as a comedian, should really be dipping his toe in politics in this way…but perhaps we’ll leave that for another blog post?