I spent Saturday afternoon watching the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” and enjoyed it for the most part. But reading some of the tweets from the pundit class showed some of them missed the point. The only problem I had with it, is the idea that the political insanity comes from both sides equally. That’s a false equivalency.
People like David Corn and Talking Point Memo’s Brian Beutler seemed under the wrong impression that the rally was a GOTV rally and complained throughout that no one on stage mentioned voting. Mainstream media outlets also assumed it was a partisan political rally because they tripped over themselves to ban their employees from attending or participating in it.
Jon Stewart made clear that it was a comedy show to point out the problem of our current rancid political debate in the country not a GOTV show. It was definitely not partisan.
While I do agree that we need more civility, the rancid aggressiveness is one sided and the side that is most aggressive is the Tea Party/GOP side. They need to tone down thousands of percent more than those on the left side.
That is where Stewart is naive. There are two (or more) points of view but NOT all are equally valid. Most from the right are based on complete lies.
I agree we should work on toning down the rhetoric but progressives and others on the left side should NEVER drop our guard and hope and pray the right joins us in working together. That’s why the President and the Democrats are going to take a hit on election day.
How many times do we need to be beat up before people like Stewart get it?
