This Article is From Oct 31, 2010

US rally aims to restore 'peace & sanity'

US rally aims to restore 'peace & sanity'
Washington, DC: In the shadow of the US Capitol, comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert entertained a huge throng of thousands on Saturday at a "sanity" rally poking fun at the nation's ill-tempered politics, its fear-mongers and doomsayers, just three days before the congressional election.

"We live now in hard times," Stewart said at the end of the rally. "Not end times."

Part comedy show, part pep talk, the rally drew together tens of thousands stretched across an expanse of the National Mall, a festive congregation of the goofy and the politically disenchanted.

People carried signs merrily protesting the existence of protest signs. Some dressed like bananas, wizards, clowns, green Martians and Uncle Sam.

Stewart, a satirist who makes his living skewering the famous on the late-night cable TV satirical news program "The Daily Show," came to play nice.

He decried the "extensive effort it takes to hate" and declared "we can have animus and not be enemies."
Colbert, who poses as an ultraconservative on his Comedy Central cable TV show "The Colbert Report," played the personification of fear at the rally.

He arrived on stage in a capsule like a rescued Chilean miner, from a supposed underground bunker.

He pretended to distrust all Muslims until one of his heroes, basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who is Muslim, came on the stage.

"Maybe I need to be more discerning," Colbert mused. He told Stewart: "Your reasonableness is poisoning my fear."

Screens showed a variety of pundits and politicians from the left and right, engaged in divisive rhetoric.

Fox News host Glenn Beck, whose conservative Restoring Honour rally in Washington in August was part of the motivation for the Stewart and Colbert event. Called the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, it appeared to rival Beck's rally in attendance.

With critical congressional elections looming on Tuesday, Stewart and Colbert refrained from taking political sides on stage, even as many in the crowd wore T-shirts that read "Stewart-Colbert 2012" and left-leaning advocacy groups set up shop on the periphery, hoping to draw people to their causes of gay rights, marijuana legalisation, abortion rights and more.

Organising for America, Obama's political operation based at Democratic National Committee headquarters, was mounting a "Phone Bank for Sanity" to urge people to vote on Tuesday.

Don Novello, who years ago played Father Guido Sarducci on the TV comedy "Saturday Night Live," provided the opening benediction. He polled the crowd on their religious leanings, then gave thanks to God for allowing everyone to assign their various causes to him.

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 singing "Crazy Train" as he barged in on the folk-rocker's "peace Train" in a mock clash of music and cultures. Their standoff ended once the O'Jays came on stage to perform their soul hit "Love Train."

Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow also performed, singing if "I can't change the world to make it better, the least I can do is care."

Other performers included John Legend and The Roots, Sheryl Crow, "Law & Order" actor Sam Waterston, and Tony Bennett, who closed the show by singing "America the Beautiful."

The idea was to provide a counterweight to all the shouting and flying insults of this polarised election season.
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