4 Reasons Why Jon Stewart's Restoring Sanity Rally Is Great for Progressives

[jefferson_dem]

4 Reasons Why Jon Stewart's Restoring Sanity Rally Is Great for Progressives
By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet

Posted on October 29, 2010, Printed on October 29, 2010

Given the way things have gone for progressives since the election of Barack Obama, perhaps we shouldn't be blamed for looking warily, as some do, at the spectacle that promises to fill the national Mall tomorrow at the rally hosted by Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. But with any luck, it will be a eye-feast of hundreds of thousands of good-humored, well-behaved Americans, there to answer the cynicism of Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally, at which the notion that the election of a black president somehow sullied the nation's dignity was dressed in sanctimony and a display of patriotism so bombastic that it was almost camp.

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.

Jon Stewart, whose on-air character is the stand-in for ordinary citizens amazed at the absurdity of American politics first announced his part in tomorrow's big event as a rally titled "Restoring Sanity," an obvious rejoinder to the travesty that was the "Restoring Honor" event convened by Fox News host Glenn Beck in August. There's even a little inside joke in Stewart's title: Pundits who are obviously ignorant of the tenets of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program painted Beck's revival as a sort of giant A.A. meeting, although it resembled nothing of the kind. "Restoring Sanity," however, comes straight out of A.A.'s second step: "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

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.

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http://www.alternet.org/news/148662/4_reasons_why_jon_stewart%27s_restoring_sanity_rally_is_great_for_progressives/

[polichick]

1. I have a feeling there will be just as many right-wingers there as progressives...

Since Steward does ridiculously equate voices on the far right and far left, and a lot of right-wingers still think Colbert is one of them.

In any case, it'll be interesting and I'll probably go.

[cyndensco]

2. I was not thrilled with the participants he chose to ride his bus.

Suddenly it feels the rally will be all-inclusive...equal disrespect to the right and left. I hope I am wrong.

[polichick]

5. That's what it looks like to me too. nt

[swilton]

3. I don't agree that the author defended his statement that

the pluses of the rally trump the minuses.

The false equivalencies is the biggest issue - and there are many that Stewart has included on the left that I don't feel should be included - the Bush as war criminal certainly comes to mind but so does the 9-11 truth issue.

The author's article isn't clear in explaining how his four pluses specifically relate to progressives.

In the end, I think Stewart's message is being muddied by too many issues and it will appear as theatrics thus trivializing the many weighty political issues at hand.

[jenmito]

4. OFA will be there registering voters/getting out the vote/etc. n/t

[polichick]

6. imo this is really about getting the youth vote out - I just hope it...

...doesn't get as many right-wing votes out as it does Dem.

[jenmito]

7. The RWers are going to vote anyway. It's OUR side that needs to GOTV. n/t