Mr. Stewart Goes to Washington, But Why?

It was a beautiful Fall day, perfect weather to inspire a person (liberal, 18-30, mostly white) to jump on one of 200 buses paid for by the great comedy supporter Arianna Huffington and come to the Nation’s capital for some laughs. And come they did. “Tens of thousands” gathered in Washington DC on Saturday for a corporate sponsored, astroturf rally/comedy show hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. We will no doubt hear wild estimates on the high and low end when it comes to the crowd size, but what’s the point? Aren’t we past the “mine’s bigger” argument yet? Perhaps not.

The size of the crowd was impressive by most standards, but I have to wonder if this event was, as MSNBC’s Luke Russert speculated in his live wrap-up, “this generation’s Woodstock”? WOODSTOCK? Really?

Luke, use the Force and open a history book. Woodstock was three days of Peace & Music. This was three hours of vertical integration and promotion. Perhaps in the attention-span challenged minds of these 20-30yr-olds, three hours is equal to three days. But let’s just call it Laffstock 2010.

After the show, the insatiable press corps was even treated to more from Stewart & Colbert as they hosted a press conference.

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Oh plu-leaze. Could Stewart be any more of a tortured artist?

The Irony Lamp was also burning very brightly as Stewart, the guy who spends his waking hours mocking the rest of the news business is bristling at the possibility that his own presentation might suffer similar scrutiny and garner (gulp) bad reviews? Jon, just cash that very large check and take your pampered self back to the luxurious life you lead in your multi-million dollar, 6,000 square foot, Emmy-filled (he has 13 of them), Tribeca apartment you call home. We don’t need the diva trip.

Back to the event itself. I still wonder about the real purpose of this rally. Was it a response to the massively successful Glenn Beck 828 event that drew somewhere around 500,000 people? Possibly. There certainly was a striking similarity between the graphics, staging and structure of both rallies. Right down to the presentation of medals… Coincidence? I think not.

Perhaps we are all overthinking it. Maybe this was just a brilliant publicity stunt for a couple of very clever comedy shows. As a fan of laughter, I must openly admit to chuckling and in some cases laughing out loud at on-stage antics as well as the clever signs carried by some of the attendees. This country can still manufacture a good laugh. There was plenty of low-brow comedy in the crowd too. What proud parent wouldn’t want to see their child carrying a classy placard reading, “I masturbate to Christine O’Donnell.”

Stewart closed the bash with some allegedly unprepared thoughts that ran 12 minutes long and sounded about as off the cuff as any of the President’s TelePrompter driven speeches. We were meant to believe that this was Mr. Stewart’s event epiphany, emotions that welled up as he witnessed the size of the crowd and their reactions? His most quoted statement from the afternoon, “If we amplify everything, we hear nothing” is a fine observation, especially from a man who has an hour of TV time each weekday to amplify and mock just about anything his highly paid staff of writers cares to attack. Oddly enough he spoke of Principles and Values, something that was at the center of Beck’s 828 rally. Hmm.

So as Jon Stewart climbed the moral high ground, I was reminded of conflicting emotions often felt at the end of the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethons, when the famous funny guy suddenly went all serious on us, or for the younger readers, I take you not quite so far back to the grandfather of tabloid TV shows, A Current Affair. Maury Povich hosted a show that touched on some of the sleaziest stories of the day, but always ended with Maury playing a piece of tape with highlighting a touching story or one with a little bit of a happy ending to it and then Maury sort of winking at the camera. That was exactly the same feeling I had watching Jon Stewart laying down the extra large dose of serious on us at the end of the Restoring Sanity rally. For the record, I wasn’t buying it from Lewis and Povich and I’m not buying it from Stewart.

And finally, I would like to mention something that, amid all of the excitement on stage, Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert seemed to have forgotten. Tuesday is election day, please vote.