WASHINGTON (AP) — In the shadow of the Capitol and days before the election, comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert entertained a huge throng rallying Saturday for “sanity,” poking fun at the nation’s diversity and its ill-tempered politics.
The crowds — easily tens of thousands strong — were festive, goofy, disillusioned with the state of politics if not the nation, and ready to play nice at a gathering called as a counterweight to all the shouting and flying insults of a polarised election season.
Organisers insisted the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear wasn’t about politics. Still, supporters and left-leaning advocacy groups hoped it would rekindle some of the voter enthusiasm for Democrats seen in 2008, particularly among young adults.
Stewart, host of the satirical cable TV news show, “The Daily Show,” is popular especially with Democrats and independents, a Pew Research Center poll found. Colbert of “The Colbert Report” poses as an ultraconservative, and the stage yesterday was stacked with entertainers associated with Democratic causes or Obama’s 2008 campaign.
In one routine, Stewart and his associates queried some crowd-goers to identify themselves by category, eliciting answers from attendees such as “half-Mexican, half-white,” ”American woman single” and “Asian-American from Taiwan.”
“It’s a perfect demographic sampling of the American people,” Stewart cracked. “As you know, if you have too many white people at a rally, your cause is racist. If you have too many people of color, then you must be asking for something — special rights, like eating at restaurants or piggy back rides.”
The event sought in part to be a counterpoint to the “Restoring Honor” rally in August by Glenn Beck, the Fox News commentator popular among conservatives. Beck’s rally, which had strong religious overtones, drew some protests from civil rights supporters because it coincided with the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington.
Don Novello, who years ago played Father Guido Sarducci on the TV comedy “Saturday Night Live,” provided the benediction. He polled the crowd on their religious leanings, then gave thanks to God for allowing everyone to assign their various causes to him.
Colbert arrived on stage like a rescued Chilean mine worker, in a capsule from a supposed underground bunker, after Stewart made a show of counting the crowd, tens of thousands strong, one by one.
Egged on by the hosts, Ozzy Osbourne and Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, engaged in something of a battle of the bands, the heavy-metal rocker and the folk-rocker interrupting each others’ train-themed songs. They were followed by the O’Jays performing their hit “Love Train.”
Other performers included John Legend and The Roots, Sheryl Drow, “Law & Order” actor Sam Waterston, and Tony Bennett, who closed the show by singing “America The Beautiful.”
But there were political undertones, too, pushing back against conservatives ahead of Tuesday’s election.
Slogans urged people to “relax.” But also: “Righties, don’t stomp on my head,” a reference to an incident before a Senate debate in Kentucky at which a liberal activist was pulled to the ground and stepped on. And, “I wouldn’t care if the president was Muslim.”
Shannon Escobar, 31, of Bangor, Pennsylvania, came with a group of 400 people on buses chartered in New York. A supporter of President Barack Obama in 2008, she said she’s tired of nasty rhetoric from both sides and disenchanted with lack of progress in Washington.
“I want to see real change — not Obama change,” she said. “We need a clean slate and start over with people really working together.”
A regular viewer of Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” she said she had a dream that he ran for political office, but got “corrupt and dirty.”
“I need him to stay pure,” she said, deadpan.
People also carried signs in favor of the United Farmworkers labor union and the movement to give the U.S. capital a voting seat in Congress. Many were college students, but the crowd cut across all age groups. “Seniors for pot” cried a half-dozen older people.
Even so, Stewart said the day was about toning down anger and partisan division. “Shouting is annoying, counterproductive and terrible for your throat,” he said on his website.
Comedy Central’s park permit put the crowd estimate at 60,000.
(AP)___
