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Stewart and Colbert Plan Competing D.C. Rallies
Lev13than writes "In a direct retort to Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have announced competing rallies on October 30th. Stewart plans to host a 'Rally To Restore Sanity' on Oct. 30 on the National Mall in D.C. for the Americans he says are too busy living normal, rational lives to attend other political demonstrations. Colbert, meantime, will shepherd his fans in a 'March To Keep Fear Alive.' 'Damn your reasonableness!' Colbert said. 'Now is not the time to take it down a notch. Now is the time for all good men to freak out for freedom!' Stewart, meanwhile, has promised to provide attendees with signs featuring slogans such as 'I Disagree With You But I'm Pretty Sure You're Not Hitler' and 'I'm Afraid of Spiders.'"
Kudos to you, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
You make my world seem slightly less irrational with each and every day.
when you see the vicious, fear-addled, hysterical fearmongering and demagoguery going on in the usa, you can easily grow despondent and depressed about the future of this country
and then you see that the antidote to this vile sleaze, the ray of sunshine, is simple humor, and irony, and sarcasm
the antidote to the poisons of the lowest basest emotions and motivations from the human character are the fruits of the higher faculties, and simple cheerfulness and confidence
if the drek you see being assembled into herds of mindlessly angry propagandized partisan sheep on the far right depresses you, do not give up heart, nor give up hope: just give a good laugh, and smile, and beat the zombie horde back into the dustbin of history where they belong
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but JS and SC are doing the EXACT same thing they're bitching about Glen Beck doing...
Comedy often is about doing the exact same thing - just in a context or with a small twist that reveals how ridiculous it is.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
No, they're not. John Stewart and Steven Colbert are satirizing Glen Beck. Glen Beck is serious. That's the difference. The point of this type of satire is to draw attention to the absurdity of the thing/person/event being made fun of by imitating its form and taking the ridiculous characteristics ad absurdam.
I disagree with you but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
As I understand it, the permits aren't normally granted until just before the event anyway, no matter how far in advance you start setting it up. By the time you've jumped through the other hoops, the actual permit is more of a formality. It was the same way for Beck's rally.
No they're bitching that Glen Beck is doing it under the guise that his "truthful" *cough* news commentary is somehow helping America when really he's pulling all the tricks to raise his viewership. With Stewart and Colbert, they are comedians. Their shows are satire. This has never been muddled by them. What is sad is that their satire is often more informative than real news, but their intent has always been comedy.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
But you do apparently have the internet, through which one can view their shows.
For someone who trots out his "I don't watch TV and therefore am better than you" sign as often as you do you either are very bad at doing feigned ignorance well or are doing willful ignorance very well.
The problem with Stewart (not so much Colbert), is that too many people get their news from him, a comedian (or is he??).
That's not a problem with him - that's a problem with the American news media.
And then the Media wonders why they're losing to the Internet. Getting news from reliable sources on the Internet is like reading the news a day, a week or sometimes even years early. The trick is, reliable sources. But that's the trick with the mass media as well - and it is slippery to find a site that dispenses mostly facts, as opposed to mostly confirmation bias.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
Why didn't he do this when there was a Million man march, or any of the other "rallies" that have taken place by well known left leaning organizations?
Well for starters, the Million Man March was in 1995. The Daily Show didn't exist until 1996 and Jon Stewart didn't host it until 1998. So unless he has some sort of time machine, it was nigh impossible to do it at the time. As for other rallies, he's made fun of both "truther" and "tea party" rallies. Why hasn't he done an anti-rally rally? I suppose it has more to do that Glen Beck did one more than anything else.
Stewarts just pissed because the Tea Party (and conservative libertarians) have taking the playbook from Leftwingers .THAT is why he's having the rally, it isn't about comedy at all for him. His rally is seriousness dressed up as comedy, just like his TV show. This rally only shows how petty he really is.
From what I can tell he's making fun of the hypocrisy. When the liberals where having these rallies opposed to the Bush administration and the war, they were called "unpatriotic" and "un-American". Liberals were hurting America by opposing the President it was argued simply by exercising their right to free speech and protest. Now that the conservative party is no longer in power, these rallies are "expressing freedom" and "restoring honor". Problem is that they are doing the exact same things. And Stewart is making fun of that.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Both rallies are funded by Comedy Central (Viacom). They are only "competing" if you think organized wrestling is a competition.
The sad thing is, Stewarts rally could have had a decent point to it, but when paired with the "Rally for Fear" how can you take either seriously? The whole thing as it is turns to a vapid joke, the intent simply to ridicule people they wish to brand as extremist even though most are the 70% Stewart spoke of.
I admire Stewart for calling out Truthers and Birthers as equally ignorant, but he wants to paint the whole Tea Party movement with the brush of a few fringe members when it wouldn't make sense to claim the Democrats are all Truthers just because a few of them usually show up at democratic rallies.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The problem with Stewart (not so much Colbert), is that too many people get their news from him, a comedian (or is he??).
Then explain why people who watch The Daily Show have been shown (via objective tests and surveys and the like) to know more about what's going on in the world than people who watch CNN. Jon would be the first to point out that there's something wrong with this picture, but that doesn't mean that he's doing a disservice to his audience.
His rally is seriousness dressed up as comedy, just like his TV show.
Most great comedy has a serious point wrapped inside of it. For instance, George Carlin did a spiel on rape, where he made quite offensive jokes ("Hey, she [a 90-year-old] was asking for it, she had on a tight bathrobe.") as a way of pointing out that rapists are horrible scum and that "Hey, she was asking for it" is no excuse.
Now Colbert, he's making fun of Stewart just as much as he's making fun of GB.
And now we get to the real truth: You're not concerned about whether Jon is being serious or comic, or even providing useful news. You're just upset because he's targeting somebody you agree with, and by extension, you.
I am officially gone from
What do Beck, Stewart and Colbert have in common?
They're entertainers, not political scientists.
I don't want actors writing mission critical code for our spacecraft, and by the same token, we the voters shouldn't get our opinions from people who are paid to make us laugh, not make us see truth.
Labels labels labels... you hear that, NASA? If your coders are in a theater troop in their spare time, they shouldn't be allowed to write mission-critical code, because actors shouldn't be allowed to do that.
And what you can accomplish in life is limited by the title that someone is willing to bestow you upon hiring, not by who you are and what you can do; your identity and your potential are defined by the title you hold. If your paycheck says "make jokes", then anything you do that isn't a joke should be ignored.
So believes hessian, who is a slashdotter and therefore should not be allowed to have a girlfriend. Because labels define you and everything about you.
You can't take the sky from me...
In 2009 the PEW research study asked individuals where they got their news then 23 factual questions about US politics and wold affairs. Below is the list of news sources, correlated with percentage of correct answers:
From this can we pretty definitively site that the fans of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are more likely to be knowledgeable about what's going on in the world than Glen Beck;s rally attendees?
The problem with Stewart (not so much Colbert), is that too many people get their news from him, a comedian (or is he??).
- no no no no no no no no no, the problem is not that Stewart is encroaching into the domain of news, the problem is that news as it is delivered by 'main stream news media' became indistinguishable from comedy.
You can't handle the truth.
Where are those people who oppose the war now? We're still at war in Afghanistan, and yet those people have all but disappeared. Oh because it is THEIR guy running the war it must be okay.
Obama lied, and people died!
We're still at war, where are the war protesters?
They weren't protesting the war, they were protesting the president under the guise of protesting the war. Now that their guy is in office, code pink is all but gone and where is Cyndi Sheehan? How come she isn't camping out in front of Obama's vacation houses?
There's enough hypocrisy to go around, quit pretending it is only one sided.
People were opposed to the Iraq war (a war without a reason), not against the war in Afghanistan (a war justified by the events of 9/11.) People were opposed to the Iraq war because it prevented the US from completing the mission in Afghanistan. Had the Iraq war never started, chances are we would have been out of Afghanistan quite a while ago.
For someone who complain about the war opponents, you don't seem to have much of a grasp of the events they were opposing, do you?
They weren't protesting the war, they were protesting the president under the guise of protesting the war. Now that their guy is in office, code pink is all but gone and where is Cyndi Sheehan? How come she isn't camping out in front of Obama's vacation houses?
Are you referring to the Cindy Sheehan who protested at Martha's Vineyard when Obama was staying there in August of 2009? The same Cindy Sheehan who was arrested last October while protesting Obama's continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan outside the White House? The very same person who went to Norway to protest Obama's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, and who was arrested again this past March outside the White House?
Yeah, you're right. It's all about Bush, and has nothing to do with the war.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
They know their relevance is ending when the 20 somethings that used to watch them while eating cheetos are now turning 30 and are bored with their childish humor.
Got a source for that? My Googling turned up this:
Vs. last summer, ratings for “The Daily Show” were up +10% among Adults 18-49, +22% among Adults 18-34, up +20% among Men 18-34 and up +15% among Men 18-24. Viewership grew +9% to 2.2 million Total Viewers (P2+)
Vs. last summer, ratings for “The Colbert Report” were up +9% among Adults 18-49, +18% among Adults 18-34, up +13% among Men 18-34 and up +12% among Men 18-24. Viewership grew +9% to 1.5 million Total Viewers (P2+)
Unless that's factually incorrect, it would appear that they're relevance is increasing rather than decreasing and these rallies may be an attempt to publicly show their relevance to a country that's gotten the impression that the tea party groups are much more relevant than they actually are.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkertons
blackwater anyone?
i'm not a paranoid, but corporations have a lot of money, that can buy a lot of influence, and that's something reasonable to fear, because it is very genuinely pointed against the rights and desires of the general public. do you know what it took to win a 40 hour workweek in this country? vacations? outlaw indentured servitude? outlaw child labor? safe work conditions? these are not jokes, these were all about corporations who would be very happy we be uneducated machines without rights existing only to make them profit. just look at china, the suicides at foxconn
and there are people who actively argue against government regulation of industry? they call themselves libertarians, they champion the rights of individuals, but the real world effect of their agenda is to merely unleash corporatism
corporatism!=capitalism. i am NOT attacking capitalism. in fact, in all of economic history, socialism and communism are not the greatest enemies of capitalism, monopolies and oligopolies are: corporatism. the greatest enemy of small struggling businesses in this country are not government taxes or socialist healthcare: it is large entrenched businesses who don't want the competition and rig the market to work for them. it is perhaps the greatest trick of corporate propaganda that capitalism and corporatism has been conflated as the same thing in some minds, and socialism demonified as the enemy (because it might mean a corporation somewhere has to spend more on the well-being of their workers), when the truth is socialism is merely a few social safety nets, and corporatism sucks the life out of marketplaces and genuinely free and fair capitalist competition
the freedoms and rights of corporations!=the freedoms and rights of individuals. except in all the speechifying and demonizing going on in the political right in this country about immigrants, the poor, homosexuals, etc., NO ONE TALKS ABOUT THE THREATS TO LIBERTY AND FREEDOM FROM CORPORATIONS
why is that?
i don't hate the right, i think some forces from the right, like religious organizations, have, in the past, spoken out and fought against corporatism, out of concern for the welfare of the people. but so many on the right i think are just duped into not seeing the real enemy of the american people: corporations that will ship your job to china and india in the name of the bottom line, and yet claim the mantle of patriotism
corporations, hands down, are the greatest threat to the well-being of our democracy with their financial influence, and i really wish i saw more voices on the right see this to be the truth of the matter, and stop with the scapegoats and willfully know nothing simpleminded appeals to the government being the enemy, when there is an obvious puppeteer behind the government pulling the strings in their favor
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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