When was the rally for sanity

Believing that national divisions are a fantasy of opportunistic cable networks is a luxury none of us can afford any longer. What this means is that Trump can tweet ridiculous things — about COVID, about Hunter Biden, about rigged elections — and later claim that he was being ironic … or not.

This was the game Stewart and Colbert played for years. They might have looked and acted like political commentators, but if you failed to understand that they were really just comedians having fun at the expense of lecherous Republicans, the joke was on you. All of this is painful and even a little embarrassing to reckon with. Watching those shows back then felt like a tonic — these guys see what I see, they acknowledge the craziness that few else in the media will point out, and this makes me feel less alone.

November 9, by: Wongo Okon. November 5, by: Aaron Williams Twitter. November 3, by: Steven Hyden Twitter. November 2, by: Carolyn Droke Twitter. November 2, by: Wongo Okon. November 2, by: Zac Gelfand Twitter. Obama may not be the best president or the worst, but I am pretty sure he was born here. I am pretty sure he is not like Hitler. We are the majority of people who don't actually believe this stuff," Puma said. Indeed, the tone of the rally was satirical rather than political.

Many of those attending wore costumes depicting the Mad Hatter, Wonder Woman or the scary rabbit character from the cult movie Donnie Darko.

Signs waved by the crowd read: "Team Sanity". The whole mood echoed Stewart's decidedly apolitical behaviour in the runup to the event. He has rarely, if ever, been an advocate for any sort of concrete agenda or liberal politics. There was no real talk, for example, of the intricacies of putting healthcare reform into practice, withdrawing from Afghanistan or job creation.

Instead, the atmosphere was one of irony and humour; of mocking those in power, not seeking to replace them. That fits the role that Stewart and Colbert play the best. They are the court jesters at the palace of the real power players in America. Their job is to point out the hypocrisies of the great and the good, not to oust them. They tell us it is not political. We should believe them," said Professor Robert Thompson, a popular culture expert at Syracuse University.

That has been echoed by the Rally for Sanity's cheerleaders in the media. Alexandra Petri, in a column for the Washington Post , gleefully highlighted how her generation had swapped political activism for ironic mockery. I for irony, iPhones and the internet… Sum up our lives in a phrase? The Importance of Never Being Too Earnest," Petri wrote in a piece that must have broken the hearts of countless former s radicals.

But she probably has a point. It was telling that a recent march on Washington organised by the labour movement attracted little attention, either in terms of marchers or media coverage. Republicans were welcomed, but there were probably more conservatives on stage thank you, Kid Rock than in the audience.

Stewart was campaigning against polarization and extremism, but instead of launching a biting critique of the party that has accelerated those trends, he spent much of his time on stage attacking the media. We know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into light we have to work together. Even in those innocent times, all of this was a little much. We were at a giant preen-in. Bill Maher, of all people, got this. All of them. This kind of thinking was not limited to Stewart and Colbert or the people holding signs about how political moderation is sexy.

It was shared by Democratic leadership, most prominently by Obama himself, who spent the first precious years of his administration mistakenly convinced that he could find common ground with the right.