Where the Hell is John Stewart?

October 28, 2011
By Sinclair Soul

This weekend marks the one year anniversary of The Rally to Restore Sanity, held on the Washington Mall last October 30th. It was spearheaded by John Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and was generally a reaction to the ever-growing Tea Party movement of 2010. But  it was more specifically a reaction to Glenn Beck’s Rally to Restore Honor which was held two months earlier on August 28th and drew hundreds of thousands to the Lincoln Memorial.

As he stated when he announced the event in September 2010, the idea behind Stewart’s rally was that 10 to 15 percent of the extremists on both sides of the political spectrum were dominating the conversation on the most important issues and it was time to hear from “the 70 to 80 per-centers.” He called his rally a “clarion call for rationality”.

During a speech at the end of his rally, Stewart set aside his usually frivolous comedic routine and lectured, rather smugly about how the 24-hour news cycle, by its very existence, make all the country’s problems harder. He stated, “If we amplify everything, we hear nothing,” making a few good points along the way, but blatantly overlooking his own role in the “noise machine.” A cynic may claim that his rally, held just three days before the midterm elections was nothing more than a veiled political rally in support of the Democratic Party, which was in deep trouble heading into that election, in no small part because of groups like the Tea Party.

Flash forward to a year later, the present time, and the Tea Party has been replaced on the streets by the various “Occupy Wall Street” factions which, if nothing else, has escalated the harsh rhetoric. The list of things that have been seen at these rallies that were never seen at Tea Party rallies – from blatant antisemitism to advocacy of the overthrowing of the U.S. government to threats of violence and accusations of assault and rape. So where is Stewart’s “Occupy Sanity” rally? Why, all of a sudden, is he unconcerned about “amplifying” by the far extremists?

In fact this past Wednesday, Stewart criticized the police action in Oakland and not the protestors. So what’s going on here? And what is the actual goal for this group?

Unfortunately, some politicians and media pundits may have tipped their hand of what their real goal is, and these poor schmucks in sleeping bags may just be tools being used by the left-wing string pullers. The term “Kent State” has been tossed around on several occasions by both media pundits and left wing politicians. Do they really want a Kent State situation, where four college students were shot dead at an anti-war rally in 1970?

And what would be accomplished by this? What if the Oakland situation had escalated to the level of Kent State and some of the unwashed dolts had lost their lives? From the Democrats point of view, you couldn’t have Neil Young come along and write a song like “tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming” because Oakland city is run by Democrats with a Democratic Mayor and a Democratic House member, in a state with two Democratic Senators and a Democratic Governor, in a country with a Democratic President. So what would be gained, from their perspective, in that extreme scenario? Nothing but chaos. And chaos in this great land is truly insanity.

Who will take the mantle now to restore sanity?

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Sinclair Soul is a championship-level background singer and now political columnist for BigBlueBullfrog.com. His column, “The Soul of the Nation” thoroughly examines the state of American politics and culture from a Soul perspective.