The Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear Looked like a Blast.

A big crowd had a fun time with great entertainment and silliness and a message to actually think and act rationally and not hate and fear other people, but try to recognize that we are all just bozos on this Spaceship Earth, so our best bet is to have fun, hang on, and be a little bit less douche-y all the time. Which, for an event by comedians for an audience of campaign-ad weary news-exhausted folks, maybe somewhat liberal-skewing, was entirely timely and completely meaningful.

I didn't go down, because my vacation time didn't work out and that would be more than a day trip for me, but my TV-viewing time did, because I caught a lot of it on my parents' cable when I made my weekly visit (I also catch Bill Maher on "On Demand" at their house. It's a family affair. Every week we listen to jokes and riff ourselves about the issues of the day. Saturday with my parents/political-comedy time is like my sabbath. When Maher is off we just have CNN in the background. Cable for us die hard TVA enthusiasts is temple for the irreligious. We bond, we have a common altar. Our sacrament is snack food and snarking on what happens on-screen. And it is really neat to me that I have parents--and my brother, who is occasionally about, where we just actually hold forth about what political figures are doing and what legislation is going on and what bs is in the news. My folks are cable junkies, I'm a reporter from Left Blogistan. They aren't really online--(They just about know I do this thing where I talk about politics and my life and have a silly pseudonym)--but they also often have really sharp insights themselves and I wish they blogged, too. Because they are some very sane people. But I would be remiss if I left out Jon Stewart's closing message:



That was something sane and touching and meaningful all at once. And there were a lot of people there, and they were very diverse.... Did I mention that?