Pajiba

Gotta say I was disappointed. The whole was just so...vague. It was all a plea for civility, which is fine I guess, but is this really the problem with our country? Lack of civility? It just seems like a copout, like racism and discrimination and populist rage and horrible economic policies aren't important - just be nice about it!

Really? I just don't get it.

see thing is his point is an attempt to motivate people who are resentful into demanding a shift in the tone of the national conversation by the middle class consumers in an attempt to officate a change in the manner in which Washington does business through scrutiny in a constuctive intelligent way

or somethign like that

it doesn't lend itself in any way to a big show of rhetoric but they all gave it a bleedin good go

won't begrudge him none of the success he had and may have

And Olbermann tweets: "Not ME! I'm HELPING! Stewart is SO wrong!" Thus demonstrating that yes, the media does think it's all about them. Which is the problem, ain't it?

The rally itself was meh, it definitely started off weak. (Well, John Legend and The Roots were awesome, but Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman were rough going.) Really, it started getting entertaining when Colbert rose up from under the stage like a Chilean miner. I dug the Cat Stevens/Ozzy Osborne schtick and the various medals awarded. Mavis Staples was great. But, yeah, it was odd in that none of it really gelled with an overarching message.

Still, the speech at the end was wonderful. I've no problem with a comedian going earnest. In fact, like so many before him, it may have been one of his career's best moments. Good on you, Dustin, for letting Stewart speak for himself.

"We live in hard times, not end times."

Best quote

@Scully:

My take on Stewart telling both sides to chill is that if the right perceives it as mostly directed against them, they'll be less likely to pay attention to it. When it's delivered about all parties in the discussion, it's much more persuasive to center-right (or center-left) people who would be alienated otherwise.

@Littlejon2001

What Scully did was the exact opposite of a sweeping generalization - it was a list of very specific things.

Let's not act like the media stations that aren't Fox News are pinnacles of news reporting, shall we? Yes yes, we all know Fox News hires people like Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, Bachmann, etc. Does MSNBC get a pass when they have people like Matthews, Schultz and Olbermann? Should CNN be taken seriously when they allow idiots like Rick Sanchez and hacks like Anderson Cooper? Why does CBS even put this kid on the air??

Point is, he's not equating the extremism, he's just saying that both sides have their name-callers and fear-mongers, their inanity and their insanity. If one side does it crazier and louder, you don't have to respond with equal fervor, you can just ignore it. Don't give credence to ramblings, wild assumptions, name-calling and fear-logic by retorting. Talk about something worth talking about. Report the news without adding an opinion or adding a "Could you be NEXT?" hook at the end. That's all.

Look, I thought the rally was a little bit weak, too. But I do think it was a good try, and I think it's good that we have someone that people generally consider to be from one side of the political spectrum saying these things, not excusing "his side" in favor of bashing the other side.

So far I've seen three commenters that understand the point that Stewart was making with his speech. The rest of the commenters are too busy trying to think of their retort to *listen* to what Stewart is really saying. The mouths are already open, the hackles are already up, and the fingers are already throwing off beams of self-righteousness at the other side.

The point is if that we all just close out mouths for a second, open our ears and our minds, and LISTEN we might hear what the other person is trying to say and where they are coming from. Will we all agree if we do that? Fuck no. But what we will do is maybe stop judging the other side with what is the equivalent of the childish thought "I'm RIGHT and you're WRONG and there is NO middle ground on which we can meet and therefore you're a BAD person. I'm taking my toys and GOING HOME because you're MEANIE" and what we will start doing is getting some shit done and fixing the mess we're in.

Sounds a lot like what my dad used to say when my brother and I squabbled as kids. Now, isn't that funny.

BarbadoSlim:

I was surprised too. Someone needs to reconnect him with Lorne Michaels.

Someone needs to reconnect him with Lorne Michaels.
Posted by: Jerry at October 30, 2010 7:23 PM

I know, right. Back in those days when he was one it was weird 'cause Novello wasn't really one of the players, more like a recurring guest comic, he would even do stand-up. And he wasn't the only one there were others. Just another reminder of how SNL *USED* to do different, experimental, things.

I was there. It was awesome. And now I'm drunk thast is all!!!!

This was great -- too bad his speech will fall on deaf ears.

The sheer insanity of the far right that is filling comment sections on various political and news sites regarding this rally sadly proves that this may already be the case.

Yeah, there are many Progressives that need to stop complaining. All this bullshit about the President not accomplishing enough and not being forecful with his agenda (e.g. Stewart calling the Health Care Reform "timid") is stupid and unhelpful. Yes, they should shut up and deal with the fact that the President has done a lot with the current Congress.

I'm simply talking about the "the Left is just as bad as the Right" equivalency that media likes to preach. Stewart is part of that. And that's part of the problem.

*I am drunk. Please disregard any mistakes.*

Stewart/Colbert 2012. Lets fucking do it.

I think the point that's being missed here was my favorite part of his whole speech, and the last line Dustin posted. "When we amplify everything, we hear nothing."

Culturally we're faced with politicians and "journalists" (and yes, I'm using air quotes because I mean the word in the very loosest sense) who grab on to a particular news item and decide it's worth a two minute slot on a 24 hour news channel, and that it's suddenly absolutely vital to the country that we address it right then, damnit.

Take all those two minute slots, minus time for commercials of course, over the course of a 24 hour day and however many news channels there are, plus your local news, plus internet feeds, plus even those pesky newspapers, and you have people completely overwhelmed by what someone else decides is important.

It's like walking in a daycare where every kid in the room is screaming. The workers tend to just continue to move calmly through their day, figuring out how to stop all the crying, but they know they can't stop it all. At some point the cacophony starts to be less urgent, and more just the background noise of the day. It's not that the workers don't care, it's just that it's not going to stop, so you might as well get used to it.

When everything is worth screaming about on whatever news channel of your choosing (and trust me, there is bias on all sides of this - it's not a conservative/liberal issue in the least) at some point a sane person stops paying attention to it. Again, it's not that you don't care, it's just being tired of having it shoved down your throat.

I loved watching the rally yesterday. Don't forget, these are also comedians and much of what we saw was intended to be funny. But funny can make you think. Funny can open your mind in the way that a suited talking head trying to tell us that land sharks will soon be taking over Congress may not. Humor breaks the ice. It allows us to address the ridiculousness of a situation, so we can focus on solutions.

I know this is long, but it's something I think is getting lost in everyone trying to support "their side" or attack "the other side."

Politics is only a small part of it. If anything, it's a red herring.

Jon Stewart starting turning the corner from pure comedy to relevancy when his job forced him to observe the media in action:
"The pettiness of it, the strange lack of passion for any kind of moral or editorial authority, always struck me as weird. We felt like, we’re serious people doing an unserious thing, and they’re unserious people doing a very serious thing."

As I was just saying on another page, clean, trustworthy information is the lifeblood of representational government. And our media companies do NOT provide that.

All the horseshit our elected officials and the political parties are up to is secondary to that fact. They couldn't get away with what they do if we had honest communication about it.

Also, all the people who don't want their comedians to do anything but be a jester.... could you watch what he watches every day and do nothing at all? That's effectively giving it your blessing. He's effectively a whistle-blower on the media. And we need those.

'Shouldn't there be some, oh.. I don't know... REGULAR PEOPLE...'

Perhaps they work at a gas station, drive a bus... something like that?

The rally was about sanity and fear. The fear part was decidedly stronger and more effective. There is no discourse at the local or national level as long as everything is driven by fear and loathing. It's Thompson without the nihlism. (sp?) We can and do work together as a country, it just doesn't make news as often. But, most importantly watch the fuck out for those flip flops.

I was there, and there was something amazing about being on the National Mall with 100,000+ people. Jon's closing was the best part of the event. That, and the people next to us offering "Jump Rope with a Muslim (instead of jumping to conclusions." Double Dutch all day long. I appreciated that Stewart really hit on the current taste for painting all Muslims as terrorists. Seriously, if you listed to Hannity during the NYC cultural center craziness, it was like he was trying to start a race war. Stewart was right to hammer the hell out of that.

Fuck Stewart and anyone who buys his "This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or to look down our noses at the Heartland, or passionate argument" It is ONLY about doing that. the only reason they did it was because that jackass Beck did it.

"Federal taxes last year when down for 98 percent of people, but when asked about this, only 12 percent of the Teabaggers thought this was the case. 88 percent of them had it wrong. And a spokesman for the Teabaggers said, 'We don’t want to just be taxed less. We want to be taxed less by a white guy." –Bill Maher