It seems as if every time one turns on the television there are more and more stories about angry American citizens. Powerfully angry citizens. Citizens with some cause or another and signs. Always the signs. No one can have a rally for any cause unless there is a poster with someone sporting a Hitler Mustache. If you visit a Tea Party rally the mustachioed individual may be President Obama. At some crazy left-wing rally this individual could be Dick Cheney (still). The point of the matter is that Americans on the whole appear to be very angry and very outspoken almost all the time. And more often than not it would appear that the news corporations and the media are only adding more fuel to the fire.
Take for example the recent march in Washington D.C. led by Fox News pundit Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck held what he called a “March to restore honor” on August 28. At the culmination on the march Beck gave a speech on the steps of the Washington Monument. I would say that to try to construct oneself so obviously in the image of Dr. King would be a bit much; too brash, too presumptuous. But tack on the fact that, yes, August 28th was the anniversary of Dr. King’s indelible march on Washington and you have created an affront to his legacy. True, Beck did disperse his bilge to the public a few steps below where Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Furthermore, Beck did state that he had not planned for his march to coincide with the anniversary; he had merely picked an open date in his schedule. However I find it even more disconcerting that Glenn Beck a. doesn’t know when Martin Luther King Day is and b. thinks it removes all offense if he places his podium three steps lower.
Perhaps I am being a tad too overt in my loathing for Glenn Beck. The crux of my argument is this: Glenn Beck held a march to “Restore Honor”; I am not sure where the honor went, whose it was, and how Glenn Beck had the power to restore it. And for those reasons it appears to me as if Beck’s rally didn’t have much purpose and was merely some fox-news orchestrated fear mongering. And it frightens me that this type of thing is becoming more and more common. Liberal Media outlets do it too. Believe it or not BP oil henchmen will not actually sneak into your house, take all of your money and swap your organic Trader Joe’s cereal for some fascist breakfast food that was mined by the poor children in Uganda. And Glenn Beck will not actually brainwash the entire nation into a bunch of Tea-Party Lemmings.
So for those individuals who feel that the state of things have gone too far there is finally an answer: a light at the end of the tunnel if you will. The host of Comedy Central’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart, is holding a rally: a rally for all those people that aren’t actually thirsting for the blood of those who disagree with them. The website for the rally (“http://www.rallytorestoresanity.com/”) asks participants to: “Join us in the shadow of the Washington Monument. And bring your indoor voice.” Yes it is another march on the Washington Monument. Yes it may be a parody on Glenn Beck’s restoration of honor. But predominantly it is a chance for some reason to finally return to the media and the people of America.
We are at a time in the history of our nation where politics is perhaps the most divisive issue on the table. Republicans and Democrats can’t seem to find anything to agree upon and as a result the expediency and efficacy of our government is suffering greatly. Almost no one is taking the time to reach across the aisle, and compromises are becoming more and more onerous to attain. For that reason, and because I harbor a deep adoration for Jon Stewart I am going to try everything in my power to make it to the Rally to Restore Sanity. Perhaps travel and funding and housing and parental permission will be an issue, but this could be the defining moment of our generation. We may not have a Woodstock. We may not have a crumbling of the Berlin Wall. But we will have a rally full of nerds in ironic t-shirts carrying ironic signs trying to get across the message that sometimes sanity isn’t that bad of an idea. And that is something I simply cannot miss.