Jon Stewart's Rally to Ignore Reality: We're Cool, You're Crazy

So the Rally to Restore Sanity was good, clean, hip fun.

And that reminded me of my past, at Rodale – a health publishing company that put out Men’s Health, Prevention and Runners World. While I was an editor there, I was one of three or four conservatives, out of a company of 1300 people. The folks there were mostly young, cool and sinewy- just like the crazies I worked with while running Stuff and Maxim UK. Again, I was one of maybe, two nonlibs working and goofing off there.

My point: every single day of my life was a Jon Stewart rally. Everyone around me was pleasant, usually white, and always reveling in their reflexive assumptions about the “rest” of less hip America. Yep, they were my people when we got hammered. But because of my beliefs, I was not theirs on election day. And they’d hammer me for that.

That’s why when I watch the rally, i just wondered, who needs it?

Well, maybe to show a divide between two groups: The tea party was about candidates; The sanity rally was about celebrity.

More important, the tea party was a civilian reaction to our government’s sprint toward progressivism. The rally, however, was a celebrity reaction to those civilians.

The rally boiled down to: “we’re cool, you’re crazy.”

So the real title of the event shouldn’t have been “The Rally to Restore Sanity,” but “The Rally to Ignore Insanity.”

Because, that was the message. The teapartiers are reacting to alarming stuff: the insane spending, the bottomless deficit, weird appointments, political arrogance -it’s real anxiety over real trouble for future offspring.

Stewart’s rally says, “Ignore that. Check out Cat Stevens!” With a load of flashy entertainment and outsized personalities – they are the band playing on the Titanic – enjoying the applause as we see the shadow of the iceberg.

Tonight, a magnificent lineup!

Juan Williams!

Ann Coulter!

Dana Loesch!

and the dark knight, Pat Caddell!