Rally debrief
I was being too cautious in my immediate after-rally report: apparently I was in the company of a couple hundred thousand close friends. Not that we could tell the difference while we were there: effectively, the crowd was hrair-an infinite number, more than my mind could grasp. (Also true literally of course, in that there were more than four of us.) I mean, I could see all the people within a stone's throw and even they were more than I could count, but I simply had no idea what a small fraction of the total crowd that was until I saw the aerial photos.
Let me put it this way: we watching the last row of Jumbotrons*, roughly even with the west end of the Air & Space Museum, which means approximately halfway back when the rally was at its fullest. When Adam and Jamie had the crowd do the Wave and they were saying "There it goes...there it goes...it's almost out of sight" from the stage, it hadn't gotten to us yet-we couldn't even see it yet. It was a big crowd, is what I'm saying.
[* Jumbotron: giant robot elephant that can turn into a TV screen.]
As for the rally qua rally: the last couple weeks, the closer we got to the day, the more dubious and cynical I grew. This was looking less like a real measure to restore sanity and more like a special-event live-concert performance of the show; at best a rally for fans of the Daily Show and Colbert Report, and at worst a right-bashing media circus. But I was still going to go, because hey, I am a fan. And indeed the first hour or so of the rally was just that: a big overblown star-studded live concert; the Jon/Stephen, Sanity/Fear arguments were played too big, got too strident. But then things got more on topic with the awarding of the Medals for Sanity and Fear. And Jon's concluding Moment of Seriousness was a thing of beauty: serious, sincere, and yes, inspiring. He does love his merging traffic metaphor-I think I first heard (well, read) him say it more than ten years ago-but with reason; it's a good one.
There wasn't as much bashing of the political right as I'd feared-hardly any, really. The real bashing was of the overblown, hyperbolic, 24-hour partisan frenzy that the "news" media-cable television especially-have worked themselves into. In the end, I think NPR, the New York Times, et al., may actually have made the right call in staying objectively away.
No, I don't think this rally will have changed any minds. People who didn't like Stewart or Colbert, or take them seriously, beforehand certainly won't think them any more serious or sincere afterwards. But the point of a rally-this one, or Glen Beck's to Restore Honor, or the Million Man March, or Martin Luther King fifty years ago-the point isn't the speakers and what they say, they're not saying anything they haven't been all along. The point is the number of people who will come and from how far and wide (I chatted with some ladies in the hotel elevator who'd come from Montana to be there) to identify themselves with the message. And by that measure, it was a success.
And that evening, C and hungrytiger and I were eating dinner in the sidewalk seating of a restaurant right next to a bank, and we got to watch lots of grown-ups in costume on their way to Hallowe'en parties line up to use the ATM. Really, the sight of Rorschach waiting in line to use the ATM is just wrong; good costume, though.
Let me put it this way: we watching the last row of Jumbotrons*, roughly even with the west end of the Air & Space Museum, which means approximately halfway back when the rally was at its fullest. When Adam and Jamie had the crowd do the Wave and they were saying "There it goes...there it goes...it's almost out of sight" from the stage, it hadn't gotten to us yet-we couldn't even see it yet. It was a big crowd, is what I'm saying.
[* Jumbotron: giant robot elephant that can turn into a TV screen.]
As for the rally qua rally: the last couple weeks, the closer we got to the day, the more dubious and cynical I grew. This was looking less like a real measure to restore sanity and more like a special-event live-concert performance of the show; at best a rally for fans of the Daily Show and Colbert Report, and at worst a right-bashing media circus. But I was still going to go, because hey, I am a fan. And indeed the first hour or so of the rally was just that: a big overblown star-studded live concert; the Jon/Stephen, Sanity/Fear arguments were played too big, got too strident. But then things got more on topic with the awarding of the Medals for Sanity and Fear. And Jon's concluding Moment of Seriousness was a thing of beauty: serious, sincere, and yes, inspiring. He does love his merging traffic metaphor-I think I first heard (well, read) him say it more than ten years ago-but with reason; it's a good one.
There wasn't as much bashing of the political right as I'd feared-hardly any, really. The real bashing was of the overblown, hyperbolic, 24-hour partisan frenzy that the "news" media-cable television especially-have worked themselves into. In the end, I think NPR, the New York Times, et al., may actually have made the right call in staying objectively away.
No, I don't think this rally will have changed any minds. People who didn't like Stewart or Colbert, or take them seriously, beforehand certainly won't think them any more serious or sincere afterwards. But the point of a rally-this one, or Glen Beck's to Restore Honor, or the Million Man March, or Martin Luther King fifty years ago-the point isn't the speakers and what they say, they're not saying anything they haven't been all along. The point is the number of people who will come and from how far and wide (I chatted with some ladies in the hotel elevator who'd come from Montana to be there) to identify themselves with the message. And by that measure, it was a success.
And that evening, C and hungrytiger and I were eating dinner in the sidewalk seating of a restaurant right next to a bank, and we got to watch lots of grown-ups in costume on their way to Hallowe'en parties line up to use the ATM. Really, the sight of Rorschach waiting in line to use the ATM is just wrong; good costume, though.