The Stewart-Colbert rally

I didn't attend Jon Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's rally on 30 October in Washington, DC, but I was rooting for it. Stewart's call for a return to sanity, a retreat from the insane polarization on right and left (and across the cable news wasteland), was welcome as far as I was concerned.

I missed most of the Comedy Central telecast, but caught most of the last hour. I was unimpressed, having the feeling that "there was no 'there' there." What I saw was a few labored comedy bits, one or two totally unmemorable musical performances, and an earnest address from Stewart which left no impression on me. Everything I saw begged the question, "Why are you all doing this?"

What did I expect? I don't know. A rallying cry to storm the barricades somewhere? Well, that was probably never in the cards, and I probably would have been quick to denounce anything along those lines anyway. Stewart's role as a gadfly would have been seriously, perhaps irretrievably, compromised if he had attempted to harness his audience for any such activist purpose.

Should it have been pure entertainment? That would have been superfluous. We tune into their shows: that's entertainment enough.

So the rally came and went without leaving any impression on me. Then I read Andrew Sullivan's take on the rally in The Atlantic. I don't know if he's right about What It Meant, but I hope he is.

One obvious observation: it was the first actual ironic rally I've attended. Most of those in this movement were clearly ambivalent about being in any movement, but at the same time seemed to be acting out of some shared civic duty.

I remember feeling exactly that way in 2003 or so when I participated in my first, and so far only, march. It was against the Iraq invasion, and while I was deeply ambivalent about attending (as usual in such marches, every underdog political movement had latched onto it, and I didn't have a position on Palestinian statehood, to take but one example), I felt I had to do something to show the world that I wasn't on board with the Administration's actions.

If Sullivan's right, I have a lot in common with the bulk of the attendees (except youthfulness):

It was very good humored, and one sensed that the entire crowd loathed Fox, felt queasy about MSNBC, couldn't bring themselves to watch CNN and caught NPR in the commute. The young were out in force, but, again, they seemed like the Obama generation - not the facile dreamers who saw a Messiah in 2008, but the resilient rump who knew full well what he was up against.

Is this actually a politics?

Not if one compares it with, say the Perotistas of the early 1990s, or the Beckians of August (almost all of whom will surely be voting Republican on Tuesday because to do otherwise is the end of all American liberty for ever). But it is an identity politics: proud of being educated, sick of being stereotyped, interested in facts and reality, fed up with being condescended to ... and deeeply worried about the direction in this country.

If the ghost of Richard Nixon will allow me, Stewart and Colbert have sensed a silent plurality, alienated by both parties, still hoping for Obama's success, and yet unwilling to worship any politician or even take themselves too seriously for fear of falling into the same foul-smelling bullshit that already covers far too much of our political culture.

I still have a malaise, but maybe there are enough other sane people that one day, we can stop this country's mad thrashing about, and start to fix it. Maybe. One day.