http://www.alternet.org/story/148662/4_reasons_why_jon_stewart%27s_restoring_sanity_rally_is_great_for_progressivesAlterNet / By Adele M. Stan COMMENT NOW!
4 Reasons Why Jon Stewart's Restoring Sanity Rally Is Great for ProgressivesMore than a Hollywood ploy or a field day for moderates, Jon Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's rally offers a real shot at reframing our politics.October 29, 2010 |
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Yet progressives and liberals, ranging from left wing to the just left of center, have expressed a range of reservations, missing, I believe, the larger point of this rally's potential for reordering our out-of-whack politics, if only for a moment. But if that moment lasts until the polls close on Tuesday, it will have been worth it.
I agree with Code Pink's Medea Benjamin, for instance, that Stewart has made a false equivalence between the louder voices of the left and the right, setting the right's casting of Obama as Hitler on an equal plane with complaints that George W. Bush presided over war crimes. (The latter happens to be based on the fact that crimes against innocents were committed in the prosecution of an illegal war.) Nonetheless, there are pluses that trump any minuses in the confab that will descend upon the nation's capital tomorrow:
1. Brilliant framing: Restoring Sanity v. Keep Fear Alive - If only the White House had messaging gurus as astute as the writers on the staff of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. - snip -
In his parody of a right-wing talk-show host, Stephen Colbert quickly countered with his "March to Keep Fear Alive." (In fact, the "march" and the rally are a single event.) This framing pours all the recent right-wing demonstrations that have flooded the capital into the "keeping fear alive" category, while everybody else is defined as sane.
2. The inevitable aerial-view photos - In the age of Google Earth, the impact of demonstrations is told in satellite photos. What made Beck's rally so impressive was the view from above. The Stewart/Colbert rally is likely to draw at least as many people -- people who are coming to Washington to make the statement that they stand against the kind of fear-mongering that Beck represents.
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3. Recasting liberalism as mainstream - Everybody knows that Jon Stewart's audience is largely a liberal one. Why, then, is he describing his rally as the "Million Moderate March"? Perhaps because most Americans think of themselves as moderate.
NO. 3 & 4 & MORE AT LINK