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Monday, November 1, 2010

Rally to Restore Sanity

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Note that this comes from the Guardian.co.uk .....


Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity draws marchers from across America

[snipped]

The crowd was enormous – easily a quarter of a million people. As the masses listened to music and comedy routines broadcast from the tiny distant stage over giant screens all the way down the Mall, it was an impressive display of the power of comedy and celebrity. Whether it was a display of the power of American liberalism was much harder to say. Many observers saw the rally as a response to Fox News pundit Glenn Beck's recent "Restoring Honour" rally, which occupied the same space several months ago. That event, which attracted between 250,000 and 500,000 people, was seen as symbolising the rising power of conservatism.

[snipped]

... however you defined the Rally to Restore Sanity, there was no denying its scale. Trains, buses and planes in and out of Washington were all packed to the gills. There was barely a spare hotel room within 20 miles of the centre of Washington, or at least not one that wasn't going for several hundred dollars above its normal price. Satellite rallies and parties to watch the whole thing broadcast live on Comedy Central were held all across the country from New York to Washington in America's rainy Pacific north-west. At least six events were being held abroad.

[snipped]

... if there was one group the rally did take genuine aim at, it was the American media. That has long been the true aim of much – if not virtually all – of Colbert's and Stewart's comedy. They have relentlessly gone after the mainstream media, accusing it of laziness, elitism and pandering to power, and generally holding it responsible for a dumbing down of American life.

[snipped]

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