• Susan Seligson

    Susan Seligson has written for many publications and websites, including the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, the Boston Globe, Yankee, Outside, Redbook, the Times of London, Salon.com, Radar.com, and Nerve.com. Profile

  • Tom Vellner (COM’13)

    Tom Vellner (COM’13) Profile

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There are 10 comments on Sanity/Fear Rally: What Did It Mean?

  1. Let’s be honest people who showed up to this event were mostly college students and hippies from back in the day. This show was a comedy act. Where was the intellectual speeches on how to restore “sanity”? I also noted in this article that someone noted “Stewart’s and Colbert’s gentle digs at archenemy Fox News and at National Public Radio.” I believe on CNN with Larry King Stewart said this rally is not about ideology but rather coming together. How does making “gentle digs” at Fox news, a TOP news channel, solve anything? More importantly, how did this rally put forth any solution to fix the problems in Washington? This whole rally sounds like it was a free rock concert and comedy show, which is ultimately why so many people showed up.

  2. The Tea Party, which really began with the president bid of Dr. Ron Paul, was unfortunately dubbed a right wing movement when it gained the support of a few neocons from the Republican party. But as we see in Alaska today even incumbent Republicans are being rebuked by the Tea Party which really wants to our government to be fiscally conservative and mindful of its fiduciary duty not to amass debt in our good name and then debase the value of our life savings in order to pay it off. At the core of this is a sound fiscal policy based on sound money that cannot and should not be printed out of thin air to fund unconstitutional wars and bailouts and unsustainable popular entitlement programs that get incumbent congressman re-elected term after term after term after term.

    This rally can and should serve as a spring board for the serious conversations, among all liberty loving Americans, that will be necessary as we make the difficult decisions about spending cuts, monetary policy changes and the roll of the Federal government in our lives. People should not feel disenfranchised simply because they can no longer get the government to print money out of thin air to fund their favorite entitlement program. I say this because I know they will and they will scream racism unless they realize that “no one” irrespective of race, gender or religion is entitled to anything in America except a huge helping of liberty pie. For it was liberty that set the US apart from other nations at its inception and it will be our new found respect for it that will keep America the bastion of liberty for years, decades and centuries to come.

    In letting our government at the federal and state levels amass large amounts of debt in the name of peace keeping, providing opportunity for special interest groups, and being a perpetual care giver for retired government employees and others who have learned to milk the system we have unwittingly enslaved ourselves with taxes.

    I could go on about the regulations that restrict everything from what we can eat to how we raise our children but you get the point.

    It is time to stop the insanity.

  3. “Daily Show and Colbert Report audiences are skewed to the Northeast and California”? I think he just made that up. I’m from Minnesota and I know plenty of people who watch those shows. And I’m pretty sure that regional underrepresentation would not be the reason there were few black people there. There are black people in the Northeast and California, too. Maybe we could restore sanity if people weren’t ignorant about every region in the US other than their own.

  4. To anybody who thinks this was somehow unimportant, or the most important thing ever:

    No. This was both a comedy/music show and a reminder, largely to the media, that people yelling loudly about their causes aren’t a justification for ignoring people who aren’t yelling.

  5. A someone who attended this rally and is neither an undergraduate nor an aging hippie, I can honestly say that it was an overwhelmingly positive experience and a potentially interesting model for dialogue in the new decade–and century. Most people who attended seemed to be curious about another way to communicate about politics, economics, culture and society than the vitriol that is put forward by partisan media outlets on both sides of the aisle. “Gentle digs” at Fox news, MSNBC and other news organs point up how ineffective it has been for Americans to talk past each other in the post-9/11 period.

  6. Because Americans use public facilities, we’re taxed. This is the most effective way to fund schools, highways, libraries, and other public facilities that we would be nonfunctional without. While the Tea Party frames itself as a champion of working Americans who are overtaxed, it is funded by extremely wealthy people who live lives incredibly disconnected from working-class patterns. Voters who align with tea party candidates are working against their own interests; often they’re the ones who need public facilities that rely on taxes.

  7. I think Stewart’s closing remarks, “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” sums up what the whole rally was supposed to be about. Basically, for the U.S. to experience a breakthrough from the state it’s in, it’s going to need a new level of thinking where people’s different point of views are respected and understood and not simply rejected because it’s different.

  8. The Tea Party; if what it stands for is NOT promoting opportunities for “special interest groups” (and we all know what you are getting at here) we will have monopolies of one sole interest group, aka those who support the Tea party…since we already know that those with money and political clout (and we all know who I’m getting at here!) will have the advantage at the onset of this radical government proposal, this seems like a very biased and wealthy viewpoint. Enslaving ourselves with taxes? I think you must’nt use any sort of public institutions whatsoever! Of course you don’t, because you wouldn’t really need to, now would you?
    “I say this because I know they will and they will scream racism unless they realize that “no one” irrespective of race, gender or religion is entitled to anything in America except a huge helping of liberty pie.” O, I’m sorry if we ask for compensation for the fact that we have not, nor ever will be, at an equal playing field! It’s not entitlement to want for equal opportunity, a leveling of the system. The way you write this would have me think that you think you ACTUALLY had an equal starting point as all these groups you just mentioned, which is either feigned ignorance or denial. WE have started out with disadvantages that are centuries old. You have a “for us by us” mentality. And the rest of us Americans (regular folk)…well, we won’t stand for that!

  9. From the pictures one of my cousins had< it looked like one bit college party. I thought I was looking at pictures from Saturday Night Live. There were portapottys that people had sat on top of and crushed down. HMMM. I did see lots of people< but it did not look like shoulder to shoulder crowd as was stated in this article. Who did this supposed to represent??

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