Reactions to The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

In the wake of last weekend’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington D.C., the press have been fighting back against some of Jon Stuart’s rhetoric with scathing remarks and the exact kind of inept interpretation of message that Stuart lambasts to begin with.
 
I guess I can’t blame them, reacting the same way a child does who’s not used to receiving criticism or punishment, with finger pointing in different directions and pouty indignation. After all, the press is supposed to criticize other people, there’s not supposed to be some outsider criticizing the press – but this is what Stuart did throughout the day and in his closing speech. However, he didn’t do it simply for the sake of it, as New York Times opinion columnist David Carr would have you believe; or, because it’s popular, but because Stuart’s message has always been, “hang on, let’s wipe the bull shit off our glasses and then see what we’re working with.” To be clear, I wasn't at the rally. And from the accounts I've heard and the personal stories I've read about the event, I understand there was a good deal of media (especially cable news) roasting that went on. But after reading these things and listening to the closing speech, I think there was some willful misinterpretation going on. I'd like to add a counter voice to some of the narratives being spun, because I like to think it's important to do so.
 
Let’s take a look at Mr. Carr’s article so I can show you what I mean:
 
“Because sanity should know no party, partisan rhetoric was not on the teleprompter. So instead the host of “The Daily Show” took steady aim on the one American institution that everyone can agree to hate: The Media.”
 
If you listen to Stuart’s closing speech you’ll see that the overall message isn’t “hate the media,” (he denounces hate at a different point in the same speech as a useless waste of energy) it’s something more along the lines of, “remember that we aren’t really the caricatures we see on the news – we’re people”.
 
Carr continues: “It was a beautiful day on the Mall, and who doesn’t like kicking the press around, but speaking of ants, 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. Mr. Stewart couldn’t really go there and instead suggested it was those guys over there in the press tent who had the blood of democracy on their hands.”
 
A lovely illustration of casting blame elsewhere (why look at us when it’s the world that’s fault?) instead of actually addressing the issue of media accountability. It seems that the press has picked up a few “divert the question” tricks after listening to politicians for so long. Also, anyone who actually listens to or watches Stuart knows he objects heartily to stupid turns of phrase like “blood on their hands,” he even did a segment making fun of that phrase once... because accusing any one thing in society of being responsible, overall, for any state of affairs will inevitably be an oversimplification. The same type of oversimplification Stuart accuses the press of doing every single day and which is illustrated, here, in Carr’s article. To suggest that Stuart was wholly blaming the media for killing democracy grossly underestimates Stuart’s intellect and shows a disregard for the complexity of his discourse.
 
But, to be fair, Carr does soften toward the end of the article and when he does he actually starts to talk some truth:
 
“True, any poll of American attitudes toward the press would suggest a lot of people share Mr. Stewart’s distrust of media… True also that the pushback by the news media here and elsewhere is predictable…. But personally, I enjoy Mr. Stewart in his regular seat where he is less reasonable, less interested in obvious targets and less willing to suggest that all political ideas and movements are like kindergartners, worthy of understanding and respect if only the media would get out of the way. His barrage against the news media Saturday stemmed from the fact that, on this day, attacking the message would have been bad manners, so he stuck with the messengers.”
 
I appreciate that Carr actually made some concessions, not just about the media’s failure to inspire much confidence, but also about one of Stuart’s principle values, “just listen.” I think Carr also has a point that the media took it hard from Stuart and Colbert, but I disagree that the point of the day or the message was “kick around the media” – frankly, media, that sounds a bit egotistical.
 
This was a rally called for by the people because they happen to think that Stuart and Colbert have a way of speaking reason in a way they don’t get elsewhere. So yes, in honoring that call, the two hosts gave the people what they came for, some good old fashioned satirical roasting, but they also made the message something that the people who came could hold on to, something that goes so completely beyond the realm of politics and media that perhaps the media had a hard time grasping it – it was, remember who we are when we’re not seeing ourselves through someone else’s lens. I think he was really just trying to remind people that what’s on the news isn’t really representative of what the world, or we are like; that if we stop thinking everyone hates everyone and things are impossible to fix/make better/reconcile, then we can actually begin to fix/make better/reconcile those things. Does this idea have an element of unabashed optimism grounded, perhaps, in a somewhat utopian version of reality? Sure. But it's also a real message of sanity if I ever heard one.