Monday, November 01, 2010

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear



So, I totally missed the Peace Train, Crazy Train and Love Train mash-up by Cat Stevens, Ozzy Osbourne and The O'Jays, and missed Sheryl Crow, too, but I was able to catch the wonderful Tony Bennett sing "America the Beautiful" with his solid 84-year-seasoned voice, one of the highlights of my trek to the nation's capital. I was just happy to be there. The rally was packed! The streets of DC were so crowded that at one point, I was looking for cops to direct traffic to avoid a stampede, but, thankfully, it was a civilized crowd worthy of the Rally to Restore Sanity. I was never able to comb through the crowd to see the stage, but I had gotten to the Mall fairly late, after making my way from Union Station through the Metro (which was also packed like rush hour) for the first time. On a side note, half of those escalators weren't working - it was like being in NYC - ha!

I loved what Jon Stewart had to say in his closing speech, particularly about how amplifying everything makes it impossible to hear anything - losing sight of the forest for the trees. An example might be something like this: When the media jumps on a tiny rally of, say, 2000 protestors in a city of 8 million, to make it seem like an entire country is acting like those people, we lose sight of reality, of how varied the perspectives of a populace really are. I think the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was successful at illustrating how important it is for media (tabloids and otherwise, but especially the 24/7 red alert Faux on cable) to stop sensationalizing everything just for ratings or to make stories to stay in business, lest we lose perspective of the complexity of the issues we debate about. The rally reminded me how important it is to see people as individuals instead of stereotypes, or oversimplified demographic groups. I'm glad to have been there to support a cause to humanize individuals, to stop promoting fear and hate, and even if we disagree, to try to understand different voices, where they're coming from, so we may speak and debate freely within respectful, reasonable contexts.

That doesn't mean I think anyone should sit back and let evil run amok - I believe there are times when we have to speak up for principles, even at the cost of offending people, even those we love, who simply refuse to be wrong about anything. You know the saying that all people have to do to let evil win is for good people to do nothing. Warmongers should be called out for what they do. That's why I went to this rally - to be part of an important commentary for our time. Joy Behar might have been vulgar to call Sharron Angle a bitch for promoting herself with a blatantly racist, Leni Riefenstahl-style propaganda campaign ad demonizing Latino children, but Howard Fineman is wrong for equating what Joy Behar said with what the Tea Party guys did to a Move On protestor the other day (one stomped on this woman's head while two guys held her down on the floor - just unbelievable). How people in the media have lost sight of the reality of a physically violent offense to the point where it can be equated with words of condemnation of racism is beyond my understanding of what sanity means, but at least Howard Fineman didn't incite violence or literally stomp on someone's head to make his point about verbal abuse (I should add that I believe "bitch" carries different weight when a woman says it to another woman, just like offensive racial terms shouldn't cross racial lines).

In light of the increasingly extremist rhetoric being aimed at ordinary people from positions of greater influence, and in a time when people's deranged idea of humor is nothing more than bullying or put-downs, so much of it blatantly racist, sexist and/or violent, I'm grateful for messages of peace and civility, delivered with real humor at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's historic DC rally. No matter how much we disagree and passionately argue about issues, we have to do it like decent human beings, and grown-ups who can debate issues without taking opposing views as personal attacks, feeling knocked down and put in their place when the other person actually has a better, or broader, perspective. I believe sanity comes with humility and the willingness to learn. My favorite signs at the rally included "Better Sane than Sorry" and "Obama uses Auto-Tune". If I hadn't been too lazy to carry one, I might have carried something like this: