Bollert blog

Rally to Restore Sanity!

This comes as no surprise:

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's little get-together yesterday has made headlines. One of them being from the Daily News titled: "Jon Stewart's 'Rally to Restore Sanity' drew 200,000, beating estimated attendance at Glenn Beck's" (NYDailyNews.com) as seen here.

I mean, just look at these two, how can you resist such a rally when the two guys look like this?: [1]

According to CBS News, based on a crowd estimate from AirPhotosLive.com, the even drew 215,000 people to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.

The crowd covered the entirety of the National Mall. One attendee reported taking 45 minutes to make his way from one end of the mall to the other. The same attendee also claimed an ambulance was brought in when a police horse, overwhelmed by the crowd, kicked back, striking those standing behind.

There were also police stationed nearby to handle any potential rioting.

According to the aforementioned article, "A Comedy Central representative told Entertainment Weekly that 250,000 people attended in person, while 4 million streamed the event on their computers at home." Ah, the joys of modern technology. It's like you're almost there, but you get to avoid the drive, subway rides, crowds, and sore feet.

The network, Comedy Central which hosts Colbert and Stewart's shows submitted an event permit prior to the rally which estimated that 60,000 people would attend, but it seemed the crowd well exceeded expectations:[2]

Also, according to radio station's website wtop.com, the rally's attendees set a Washington Metrorail ridership record. "Metro says 825,437 Metrorail trips were taken on Saturday, compared to average Saturday ridership of about 350,000. Metro says Saturday's ridership surpassed the 1991 Desert Storm rally, when 786,358 trips were taken." Wow, that's a lot of people eager to get to Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" and Colbert's satirical "March to Keep Fear Alive."

Some atendees were kind enough to document their favorite signs held by crowd members that day on their Yahoo flickr site.

The rally appeared live on Comedy Central and on satellite broadcasts in 20 different cities, such as in Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, and Boise. The three hour event mostly consisted of satire and comedy with humorous sketches and musical guests such as Kid Rock, Ozzy Osbourne, The Roots, Sheryl Crow, Tony Bennett, and Yusuf Islan, the former Cat Stevens.

According to Perez Hilton [3], the rally did take on a serious note in the end when Jon Stewart made a speech saying these are "hard times, not end times."

He added: "This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism, or look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. The image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. [Americans hear] how fragile our country is, on the brink of catastrophe, torn by polarizing hate, and how it's a shame that we can't work together to get things done. The truth is, we do. We work together to get things done every damn day. The only place we don't is here or on cable TV."

For more information on why this rally was held, check out Stewart's rally's website: [4]. Then there's Colbert's rally's site: [5]