By Shannon Gentry
We arrived at The National Mall at 11 a.m the morning of Oct. 30 for The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, hosted by Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” and Stephen Colbert of the “Colbert Report.” Upon reflection, it’s clear we should have arrived by 7 or 8 a.m.
As we made our way through the crowds—where we couldn’t help but admire and laugh at the signs that reflected hilarity, fear and reason—our excitement soon turned to exhaustion. We had excused our way through the 215,000 people estimated by CBS News.
When Jon Stewart came out to give a welcome to everyone, my friends and I realized that we were not going to hear the message that we came such a long way to hear. Then it hit us: we started making our way out of the crowd and started out search for a bar with a TV. Which begged the question: Should I have just stayed at home and watched it on TV?
It was amazing to see the masses of people congregating for this one cause, one idea, one—wait—what was this for again?
Oh yeah, Jon Stewart wanted to tell us something.
“This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism or to 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,” Stewart said.
Thanks Jon, you’re right. As young students, we should care about this point because we have many years of passionate politics and distorted media to look forward to, and we should be prepared to engage in it without demonizing each other.
But was this a message that you missed out on if you weren’t there?
Graduate and undergraduate students at SCAD understand the luxuries of free time. So, was it worth the expense of the time it took to get to D.C. and back?
Yes and no.
If you have never been to D.C., never been to a rally, and never had a “Flight of the Bumblebee” weekend trip, then yes, it was very well worth the adventure to see the sights and sounds of The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.
D.C. resident and graduate student Andrew Campbell attended the rally in its entirety and thought it was “fine and entertaining, and pretty much what I expected. I would have probably been disappointed if I came from a long ways away just to see some silliness on the mall.”
But was it simply silliness?
Some people thought the opposite, saying that it was too serious and not funny enough.
I tend to agree with SCAD alumna Katie Campbell who said, “It fell right in line with the satirical nature of [“The Daily Show”] and it gave me hope for the intelligence of the country that they were able to grasp satire.”
I feel that this could have easily come across to those who were present at the rally (and could hear) and those for those who chose to watch it on TV.
Being present for the rally meant being present for the crowd and the good-natured entertainment of satirical signs, costumes and overall positive tone that the day brought. This is what home viewers lost.
