The Jon Stewart Rally – ‘Comedians’ Often Do A Better Job Than Journalists When It Comes To Telling It Like It Is

By Doug Draper

It is another sad comment on today’s news media that so many people among us feel they get a far more insightful analysis of what is going on in our crazy world today from a “comedian” than from a “journalist.”

This sign almost says it all by soneone who would rather get their news on 'Comedy Central' these days than what pass them off as news sources. Photo from Jon Stewart's Daily News site.

Niagara At Large is founded on the premise that the mainstream media, so much of it owned today by corporations that are only in it to fill the pockets of their shareholders and have no real interest in delivering news to communities, is letting residents in this region and others across this continent down when it comes to giving them the breadth and depth of information they need to participate meaningfully in democracy.

Not to slam the reporters and editors that try their best to do some decent journalism at these chain-owned operations that hardly ever care to give them the resources they need to make that possible. I’ve been there and I quit, which is why so many journalists like me are trying to do something like put an alternative news site like this together or, more often, have just given up and taken a job in p.r.

But enough of that. Getting back to those “comedians,” I have always believed that the best of this bunch – going back to Mark Twain (considered more of a humorist) Will Rogers, Lenny Bruce and my personal favourite, George Carlin – were more than humorists or comedians. In fact, the comedy label always seemed an insult to these people who could often blast through the b.s. in our politics and culture with more dynamite than even the best columnists at papers like the Washington Post or New York Times.

That seemed to be proven once again in Washington, D.C. this October 30 when on the mall between the great monuments celebrating Lincoln, Jefferson, FDR and other icons of American democracy, two “comedians” of ‘Comedy Central’ Cable TV fame named Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert hosted what they called a “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” in front of hundreds of thousands of people – probably more than attended the great civil rights march Martin Luther King, Jr. led to that nation’s capital in 1963.

Stewart has been particularly astute when it comes to exposing a news media that often never asks the critical questions that need to be asked before, for example, the former U.S. Bush administration invaded Iraq looking for “weapons of mass destruction that were never there. Stewart ended the October 30 rally with some sobering remarks about the sad state of the news media today.

Stewart’s remarks have been transcribed by a number of sources in the days since the rally and Niagara At Large includes a transcription here that seems about as true as it may get to what this “comedian” had to say about the sad state of journalism today.

Here it is for your information, and please follow by sharing your comments below the Stewart transcript.

“What exactly was this?”

I can’t control what people think this was. I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith. Or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies.

Unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke. The country’s 24-hour politico pundit panic conflict-onator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems and illuminate problems heretofore unseen, or it can use its magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous-flaming-ant epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.

There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and tea partiers, or real bigots and Juan Williams and Rich Sanchez is an insult — not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put forth the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish between terrorists and Muslims makes us less safe, not more.

The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything we eventually get sicker. And perhaps eczema. Yet, with that being said, I feel good. Strangely, calmly good, because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us through a funhouse mirror, and not the good kind that makes you slim and taller — but the kind where you have a giant forehead and an ass like a pumpkin and one eyeball.

So, why would we work together?  Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin assed forehead eyeball monster?  If the picture of us were true, our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable.  Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?  We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is — on the brink of catastrophe — torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done, but the truth is we do.  We work together to get things done every damn day. The only place we don’t is here or on cable TV. Americans don’t live here or on cable TV. Where we live our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done, not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done.

Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats or Republicans or conservatives or liberals. Most Americans live their lives that our just a little bit late for something they have to do. Often it’s something they do not want to do, but they do it. Impossible things get done every day that are only made possible by the little, reasonable compromises.
These cars — that’s a school teacher who thinks taxes are too high…there’s a mom with two kids who can’t think about anything else…another car, the lady’s in the NRA. She loves Oprah…An investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah…a Latino carpenter…a fundamentalist vacuum salesman…a Mormon Jay Z fan…But this is us. Everyone of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief and principles they hold dear — often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers.

And yet these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze one by one into a mile-long, 30-foot wide tunnel carved underneath a mighty river…And they do it. Concession by concession. You go. Then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go — oh my god, is that an NRA sticker on your car, an Obama sticker on your car? Well, that’s OK. You go and then I’ll go…”Sure, at some point there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute. But that individual is rare and he is scorned, and he is not hired as an analyst.

Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light we have to work together and the truth is, there will always be darkness.  And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land. Sometimes it’s just New Jersey.  But we do it anyway, together.

If you want to know why I’m here and what I want from you I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me.  Your presence was what I wanted.  Sanity will always be and has always been in the eye of the beholder.  To see you here today and the kind of people that you are has restored mine.  Thank you.

(Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational Niagara region.)