Jon Stewart’s October 30th bout of rally envy–despite the comedian’s rickety attempts to disavow the patently invidious nature of the convocation–was hubristically (not to mention wishfully) titled “Restoring Sanity.” (Because of its obvious facetiousness, the Colbertian “Restoring Fear” portion of the event deserves no mention here.)
The danger of Stewart’s shedding his Daily Show mask of irony and becoming a full-fledged, Obama-style community-organizing activist is that in officially adopting the views of one political party over another, he devalues the only currency of the satirist–impartiality. Because human folly is an equal opportunity character flaw, the successful satirist must not take sides. He must be able to sling arrows in all directions, else the only thing he has to peddle–the precious honesty of his criticism–is called into question. A satirist who exposes the foibles of one political party and excuses those of the other is as useful as a bus that only goes in one direction. The bus company itself would soon also only go in one direction–out of business.
Those (I suspect Mr. Stewart is among them) who claim that the “Restoring Rally” was apolitical–just a modern-day Woodstock with shorter hair and fewer hallucinogens, a Peace Train plea for reason and temperance–are either dupes or practitioners of a cunning form of political artifice.
For if the event was indeed apolitical, then why didn’t Arianna Huffington (of eponymous Post fame) spend nearly a quarter of a million dollars bussing attendees to the Glenn Beck “Restoring Honor” rally–as she did to Stewart’s rally? And where was Annabel Park and her Coffee Party on August 28th?
No, apart from the sophomoric opportunity to show up Mr. Beck at his own game (as if that were worth anything), the clear intent of the “Restoring Sanity” rally was to perpetuate the liberal side of the aisle’s beloved myth du jour, du mois, de l’époque: that it–the Left–is the voice of Sanity with a capital S and that the Right is an aggregation of amorphous Anger with a capital A. Because anger can be dismissed as irrational.
The obvious implication of Stewart’s “Restoring Sanity” appellation is that the attendees of, and surely the speakers at, Beck’s rally are the voice of Insanity. These are the same people of whom Obama so flatteringly (and ungrammatically) said at a recent Massachussetts fundraiser
Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared.
This is a theme, possibly the only one, upon which Obama is never at a loss for a new variation. During the 2008 campaign the Right was clinging to its Bibles and guns. The Cambridge police department in 2009 “acted stupidly,” the Arizona police will soon be locking up ice-cream cone purchasers, and, well, now, it seems we’re all just genetically hardwired to cower in ignorance because our 401Ks are down.
Fortunately, we have liberals like Obama and Huffington and Stewart to lead us out of our folly and restore our sanity. These sole proprietors of Reason–a blessing bestowed on them alone, the same way Zeus gave the power of prophecy to blind Tiresias–will enlighten us. No hubris in that line of thinking.
The real purpose of the “Restoring Sanity” rally–not so much to taunt Beck, though it was indisputably that–was just one more, 11th-hour, tired attempt to delegitimize the Tea Party’s very legitimate anger and marginalize the movement as irrational. Hence the involvement of Annabel Park’s Coffee Party, a group whose seeming purposelessness (other than not to be the Tea Party) I addressed in my previous Big Government “Who Put the Prozac…” column.
Striving mightily for grandiloquence, Stewart admonished “we can have animus without being enemies.” As if this self-evident truism were ever in dispute.
The fundamental flaw in Stewart’s, Park’s and their ilk’s logic is the belief that angry rhetoric is per se “insane.” They have confused sanity with civility. These people badly need to see a production of the Peter Stone-Sherman Edwards triple-Tony-Award-winning musical “1776.”
Being etymologically “civil”–from the Latin word “civis” or “citizen”–ironically does not entail behaving “sanely” at all. Impassioned angry rhetoric–even the Olbermann/Behar name-calling kind– is far from insane. It is an important safety-valve that prevents most people from inflicting physical violence on each other. The disadvantage of it, of course, is that it seldom persuades. Insanity, on the other hand, is loading PETN explosive into a toner cartridge and detonating airplanes with it.
Fear and anger are the smoke alarms of the soul. You still need a pail of water to put out the fire, but if the smoke alarm doesn’t go off, you can forget about the pail.
The country’s been ablaze for nearly two years now. Ironically, Colbert’s half of the rally–“Restoring Fear”–actually hit the nail on the head. Too bad the goofball was only kidding.