Up until the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Keep Fear Alive happened last Saturday afternoon, which drew a crowd of 215,000-plus to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., nobody was really sure if or how its execution would reflect what Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" had announced. The rally apparently wasn't going to be political and definitely not some reactionary answer to Glenn Beck, so what was it?
The rally did what "The Daily Show" team has always done: use humor to reveal truths about politics and issues of the day. And it succeeded in being as humorous as it was instructive, as light-heartedly crazy and optimistic as it was genuinely concerned. It's a formula that has proven over and over the reality of the Shakespearean jester's powers of truth through humor. Perhaps there's a reason that the Rally to Restore Sanity had double the attendance of Beck's recent gathering, because, unfortunately, polarizing pundits can't actually be funny or meaningfully self-deprecate for some reason.
Rather than describe the music and comedic events of the rally as evidence of its effectiveness and risk retelling what is already known or spoiling for those who missed it and wish to see the video, Stewart's final 12-minute speech at the end of the rally did such an amazing job of summarizing the critical message behind the gathering that it alone is a fair representative of this event.
"I can't control what people think this was," Stewart said. "I can only tell you my intentions. 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 or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are, and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies."
Here Stewart identifies the critical difference between passionate energy and conflict energy: We can be animated and motivated by the values and ideals we identify with and still resist the temptation of giving into the primal hostility that can be sparked by the instinctual function of cognitive dissonance. Higher-brain functions can and should prevail in our country's fundamental discussion about itself.
"But unfortunately one of our main tools in delineating the two broke," Stewart said. "The country's 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen, or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire ... If we amplify everything, we hear nothing. The inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe, not more. The press is our immune system. If we overreact to everything, we actually get sicker — and perhaps eczema."
Even with the advent of the Internet and the information shift it has brought, the cable news media, or "perpetual panic conflictinator," remains the most significant and influential place where our country has this fundamental discussion about itself; whatever it's supposed to do, the news media has an unbelievable power and influence, which turns the pettiest of issues' inherent importance into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The free press, indeed acting as our national immune system, can either use its infrastructure and power to objectively illuminate or destructively emphasize and spin things in a way that provokes the baseness in our natures, conflict for conflict's sake, for ratings insurance. Being the organs in the guts of our nation, the press has a responsibility to spin and dramatize less and objectively report more.
"And yet, with that being said, I feel good — strangely, calmly good," Stewart said. "Because the (polarizing) image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false ... We hear every damn day about 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, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day."
While the speech ended up saying nothing about the personal responsibility of people's complacency with conflict-based rhetoric and blamed all dysfunction and imbalance on news and pundits, this is a public cry for media objectivity that is as rare as it is critical for the longevity of our species. The full speech can and should be seen on YouTube — just search for "Jon Stewart's speech."
—Wiley Robinson is an undecided sophomore. He can be reached at rrobin23@utk.edu.