Within minutes of the conclusion of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, the articles were flying. Most simply reported on the event. Others decided the way to go was to focus on the numbers in attendance, the audience being too liberal, or how the rally “won’t really change anything at all.” In any case, we get some excellent examples of the usual ways critics go about their jobs.
After a rally that criticized the media for creating fear and artifice, some journalists apparently decided to help Jon Stewart prove his point. So there are lots of attempts at trying to pigeonhole the show. And if there’s one thing some journalists can’t stand, it’s ambiguity. (Well, that, and paying for our own beers.) So the usual tropes came out.
The Washington Post’s Robert McCartney really took the attendees to task. This is hard to pull off. You really have to think very little of the people you’re writing about.
“… it’s self-defeating and even delusional to think progressive policies are going to be achieved just by agitating nobly for a more positive style in politics. It isn’t enough to have a few laughs or wring your hands over the fact that those mean people in the tea party and at Fox News get too angry and yell too much.”
So I guess they shouldn’t have bothered holding it. I don’t think anyone on the stage or in the audience thought a live variety show would change politics. Deciding a show is no good because you don’t like the audience is like deciding a meal is lousy because you don’t like the other people in the restaurant.
The Washington Post’s Stephen Stromberg decided the day was about the audience. Executing this move is pretty simple; you find a few people in the crowd with political agendas and extrapolate:
“At a rally about eschewing fear, how ironic it was to overhear people talking animatedly about how Sarah Palin makes them afraid. At a rally during which the message from the stage was about getting over petty disagreements, how out-of-place to see a poster the read, “freedom fries — never forget.”
You could hardly get through an article without it mentioning, in detail, the size of the crowd. Many articles compared the audience for the rally to the size of the audience at Glenn Beck’s rally, thus missing the point. The LA Times provides a good example of this gambit, the “throw a bunch of numbers against a wall and pretend they are important indicators” maneuver.
“The turnout was estimated by organizers at more than 250,000, but the figure was not confirmed by local or federal authorities, who do not estimate crowd sizes. An aerial estimate by CBS News estimated 215,000 attended, plus or minus 10%. In a similar estimate for a rally by conservative commentator Glenn Beck in August, CBS estimated the crowd at between 78,000 and 96,000.”
Is there a number by which we determine whether an event is a success? What does it matter if Beck drew fewer attendees? Does that make his audience any less valid in its views?
At the Andrew Breitbart-produced Big Hollywood blog, a writer was really offended that Stewart criticized the media. It’s tough to pull this off, because you are a journalist and have a conflict of interest. Still, John Nolte plows right through :
“[At the end of the show, Stewart got serious] and by serious I mean a little smug, a whole lot elitst, and all kinds of sanctimonious over America’s three cable news channels, what he called the “24 hour politico, pundit, perpetual panic conflictinator” that he says “did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder.” Here’s another word for the “24 hour politico, pundit, perpetual panic conflictinator”: DEMOCRACY.”
“Stewart arrogantly assumes that he’s one of the elite few who can make sense of all the amplified cable noise. Gee, thanks Jon, what would we among the great unwashed do without you to inform us that the press over-reacts.”
“Sanctimonious” is what people with a strong opinion call someone whose opinion conflicts with their own. Don’t believe me? If Stewart had made a sincere, passionate plea in defense of the media, would Nolte have declared it “sanctimonious?” And where is the evidence to support the statement that Stewart assumes he’s “elite?” Is he quoted as saying that’s his belief? Did his co-workers tell you this? One of the first things an editor will cut from your piece is when you presume to get into the head of someone.
(Looking back on that last paragraph, it might have been a little sanctimonious.)
The New York Times shows us what happens when you dare criticize the media: deflection. Here, all you need to do is point to completely different problems. Writer David Carr tut-tuts:
“…media bias and hyperbole seem like pretty small targets when unemployment is near 10 percent, vast amounts of unregulated cash are being spent in the election’s closing days, and no American governing institution — not the Senate, not the House of Representatives, not even the Supreme Court — seems to be above petty partisan bickering.”
You know what’s ironic about this? “The Rally To Highlight Unemployment, Unregulated Campaign Cash and Partisan Bickering” was Stewart’s first choice.
I didn’t think the show was perfect. The entire first hour was solely music. I like The Roots, but get on with it. The opening of the second hour with the Mythbusters conducting “the wave” and then doing seismic measurements of the crowd jumping was way too long. Colbert’s scripted interruptions became irritating. And there were a couple of moments of confusion, when Stewart and Colbert genuinely didn’t know what the next act would be. The Daily Show correspondents missed cues (no doubt due to the noise) and the comedic timing was, in many cases, off.
Still, this was great fun. I liked the message of the day (no matter what the audience demographic was) and thought the show hit the right balance of criticism, satire and self-deprecation. Really, it was just “Daily Show Live!”
And I loved the signs. I still can’t decide which was my favorite, although “If Obama’s a Muslim, can we have Fridays off?” was very clever. And the absurdist “I Want More Tortillas When I Order Fajitas at a Restaurant” is a movement I can squarely support. Yeah there were some attempts at seriousness and partisanship, but those attendees missed the point as surely as the show’s “meaning critics” did.
I think it’s wonderful that we have such diversity of opinion in the media. In many ways, it’s an improvement. I respect those who disagree with me. I just think there are too many people out there trying read too much into the event and taking it too personally. If you can’t laugh at yourself, you sure as hell can’t laugh at others. (Olberman: take note.)
Oh, and since all reviews have to reduce themselves to grades at the end, I give The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear an A for concept and a B- for execution. You are, of course, free to disagree. Reasonably.
