I wasn't there. I know quite a few people who were, but I couldn't get down there. So, no rundown from yours truly. That's alright. The event was symbolic, so another “who-said-what” recap doesn't matter. What's most interesting is the number of interpretations there are of the rally. Normally, or at least in my experience, there are two version of every activist happening in DC, one wildly over-optimistic and one dryly conservative.
There were roughly 200,000 people at The Rally to Restore Fear / Sanity this weekend — nearly three times the number of people at Glenn Beck's totally un-ironic rally to restore fear this summer.
Gen-X blogger Mark Ames is annoyed: “it’s an anti-rally, a kind of mass concession speech without the speech–some kind of sick funeral party for Liberalism, in which Liberals are led, at last, by a clown.”
The Washington Post sums up the rally with a soundbyte from Stewart: “At a news conference after the rally, reporters asked Stewart what message he had sent to his constituency. ‘We don't have a constituency,’ he insisted.” The article implicates liberal ineffectuality with that.
Joshua Green at The Atlantic had 17 impressions, the last of which were: “15. Mood was heavily ironic, slackerish. ‘Enthusiasm,’ such as it was, didn't seem voting-directed; 16. Didn't get the sense too many people understood the purpose of rally (me either); 17. Or care (meaning ‘all still had a good time’).”
At Slate, Christopher Beam is more positive: “The Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear, held on the National Mall Saturday afternoon, ridiculed the whole idea of a political rally. But it also managed to send a message about the broken political system, how the media abets it, and why it's OK to care — even for professional ironists.”
So, what event did we have on Saturday? It seems that getting out the vote wasn't a key concern — that's somewhat disappointing (voting, as one person says in the Slate article, is indeed a civic duty).
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