I arrived at Union Station in rough shape. Not only was I sleep-deprived, but the train managed to leave me incredibly motion sick. So I wasn't in a very good mood from the outset. I did began to brighten somewhat as I lurched toward the Washington Mall, especially due to the infectious excitement displayed by my fellow rally-goers... my nausea fading helped too.
This lasted right up until I saw the MVP section closest to the stage. Well, okay fine--it makes sense they'd want to reserve that. I continued onward for a couple minutes and saw another gate. This one was for "Special Guests". So all of those people you may have seen on the live stream? Almost all MVPs, maybe some of the special guests.
The actual normal folks were far enough back you could see the stage existed, but nothing ON the stage. Wow, it's even hard to see the red "circle" outlining the stage in that pic.
I did get there early enough to snag a good spot near the first row of jumbo-trons. I was actually trying to go further toward the middle and find some grass to have a seat on, but I ended up getting stuck right there. The crowds were thick enough that you could only make headway via a "march of the penguins" type waddle, and every so often forward progress became impossible. I waddled my way back to a position where I didn't have to crane my head upward to see the screen and called it good.
So what did I see? EXACTLY what anyone who watched the live stream saw--except on a jumbo-tron screen. I was actually pretty resentful about this (yes, I'm aware this sort of thing isn't unusual at live events) until I realized there were people attending who couldn't even get a good view of a screen.
I was already tired of standing by the time the rally began--it had been two hours, after all. They opened with a musical act--the Roots. It was followed by the Mythbusters who did some rather inane "experiments" with the crowd. It was a pleasant performance and somewhat entertaining, but I couldn't help what that really had to do with restoring sanity. It wasn't even really topical--the first hour of the rally had been squandered away on some live performances.
Stewart and Colbert finally made their appearances around 1, and they started on some comedy bits reminiscent of their respective shows. This was more what I had hoped for--although they continued to interrupt the bits with musical performances before they really picked up steam. At least this time, the performances were topical.
Overall, the performances were interesting, and the comedy could have been better but was still reasonably funny--but they lacked the sardonic wit I've come to expect from this crew. They fell back on what ended up being an extension of the back-and-forth they did to promote the rally. Not-so-witty emphasis on being REASONABLE or finding new things to FEAR.
Still, I found myself wondering what exactly was the point of this rally? It was certainly a good show--but that's all it was. A show. Stewart had somehow put together a "Rally to Restore Sanity" without actually doing anything that was remotely related to that point. Wasn't the purpose to let the voices of the middle be heard? Wasn't the point to show that the extremists in the media don't represent us all?
When Jon Stewart began his closing speech with "I'm really happy you guys are here...even if none of us are really quite sure why we are here." I thought to myself "Yes, I had been wondering that myself." He followed with a rather heart-felt speech that really did speak to the heart of the matter. That speech took about 12 minutes out of the 180 scheduled for the event.
So I asked myself, what did I expect from the rally? It wasn't supposed to be political, it was supposed to be comedy. They accomplished that. Still, Stewart makes a career of using humor to make a point--sometimes with far more effect than pundits who take it all so seriously.
Yet over half of the rally was musical performance, only sometimes and/or nominally related to the topic. The humor was more related to the reason vs fear theme rather than (in)sanity in the media/politics. Out of the entire rally, only a 12 minute speech actually addressed this issue.
It was a good show, I was entertained. As a show, it was a success.
As a Rally to Restore Sanity, it was a failure.
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