Some interesting things on the upcoming Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Keep Fear Alive, taking place October 30 on the Mall in Washington, DC have been coming up lately.
Over 200,000 people have signed on as attendees on the Rally’s Facebook page. The Huffington Post has agreed to provide free transportation to and from the rally from NYC and already has over 10,000 riders signed on. Many news organizations– NPR, the Washington Post, the NY Times, ABC, CBS and others- have forbade their employees from attending, citing this as a political rally of the Glenn Beck/Tea Party sort.
I suppose this restriction is customary for political rallies athough I am not sure this qualifies as a completely partisan gathering. The very idea behind this rally is to put aside partisanship and get the wider population reengaged in the political system so that the more extreme and vocal fringe groups don’t dictate our national conversation.
Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post has a good article on these restrictions and how the media will cover the rally. In it he talks about how the media is almost proud of the way in which they “fetishize the stupidity” of these most extreme groups, giving them coverage without ever questioning their content. When was the last time you ever heard a news reporter ask a probing question (and is so, get an answer) of one of these candidates who make grand statements about how they would change Washington but only offer vague references as to how they would accomplish it?
That term. fetishize the stupidity, has stuck with me over the last couple of days. It says so much about how we have come to value the absurd rather than the sane, about how we are all more attracted to the side show than the mundane. Unfortunately, solutions are usually of the mundane variety, requiring work and sacrifice and a unity of will. And until the media realizes that, they will always fetishize the stupid, wallow in ignorance and make arbitrary restrictions on their employees, fearful that they might find some sanity.
Redtree Times 