We had been thinking of going to Washington to combine a visit with my sister and also see The Rally to Restore Sanity. It's my home town, so events at the mall have a special meaning to me, my first being bond drives late in WWII. There is something about being immersed in the throng, feeling the excitement, that form my earliest memories.
Stewart was entering hallowed grounds. It was the location where Marion Anderson gave a concert in 1939, after she had been refused the use of Constitution Hall by the D.A.R. because she was black. It had been the site of bonus marchers, WWI veterans who were violently removed for demanding a promised pension for their war services. And of course the "I have a Dream" speech in 1963
Right until the last fifteen minutes I was disappointed, as the entertainment had been a combination of an old burlesque routines, an extended World Wide Wrestling act, and a Miss America speech, known for it's anodyne simplifications.
And then, as the show was ending, it was time for Stewart to wrap it up. He paused for few seconds, and I mentioned to my wife, "He's sizing up the room" meaning that he is getting the feel of the audience, the moment, the mood. A good speaker alters his presentation, differing whether it's a dozen or a hundred people, with you or against you and numerous other subtle variables.
Few have to do this when the audience is a hundred thousand on the United States Mall. Stewart certainly had prepared this speech, and he probably had help.....but it was him, for the moment humor being subordinated. These were the sentiments I had heard hundreds of times, each in a different way on the Daily Show. As I listened, I was taken both emotionally, and intellectually.
He was not the satirist, the mass media comedian. For this moment he was a statesman, using his unique experience and skills to try to heal our country. He used the tools that he had honed over the many years. He did not only speak to his liberal audience, in fact for every right winger who he skewered for spewing hatred, he matched it with one from the left. The disease he was attacking was too dangerous to make the distinction of who started it.
One of the metaphors he used was that of an over reaction to disease, after describing overreacting to all Muslims instead of terrorists he said, "It's like our immune system, it it overreacts to everything we get sicker."
I had been struggling to convey the same sentiments, but I don't have his talent or his resume. This diary which would never have been posted, was looking at how this very site has the quality that Stewart was decrying, exaggerated disdain for the "others" I put it this way:
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It is our way of defining who we are, of identifying those entities that are not a part of our organism, and then surrounding and destroying them. Such entities, referred to by Dailykos as "trolls" are then surrounded by "anti-bodies" who deliver destructive messages in the form of sarcasm, recipes or insults. Once identified, the "troll antigen" is now recognized, and even seemingly innocuous incursions are rapidly responded to, with readily available weapons, including "Troll Ratings", now called H.R.s.
All of us have used a thermometer to see how sick we are. What we are measuring is the degree of stress, of primary immune reaction that our bodies are undergoing. Fever is good, as it means that our organism is functioning to destroy invading pathogens. But, too much of this good thing can be destructive, in killing the invaders we, our bodies or our society, can be destroyed.
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Yes, there's no way to avoid the fact that this speech was about Dailykos as much as it was about MSNBC or Fox News. It is about a political-media culture that has become all but ubiquitous, where the caricatures of the other side are made so grotesque that finding common purpose becomes impossible. This is exactly why I believe that his speech was as courageous as is was brilliant.
For those who haven't seen it, or want to see it again, it's here:
Here's the link. to the last ten minutes of his speech.
His closing used the metaphor of cars merging to get into the Holland Tunnel in Manhattan. He ended it by saying "Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn't utopia; it's only New Jersey." If there is anyone who can deliver the difficult news to the people of this country, that we are about to enter a long slog, a slow trip through a place where there's plenty of hard work and not a lot of glamor, it is this man.
And with his rare gift of honest humor, he just may make this new reality palatable