As both of my regular readers well know, I live in the Washington, D.C. area, which means I deal with seeing crazy people everywhere, but that’s Congress for you. Being an area resident also means that because you live where politics and stuff happen, everyone with a strong opinion and lack of a job comes to your city and believes you care more about their cause than anyone else in the country.
They are always wrong. It is hard to express to people with literature about Bush or Obama being a Nazi that I really don’t care about what they think, and that I am happy to cancel out their vote. Then there are the rallies, oh, the rallies. It’s been a bad year for those. There was the annual “We Hate The War on Terrorism” rally, then there was the “We Hate Everything Congress is Doing Right Now” rally, followed by the “Glenn Beck Told Us to Show Up Here” rally. All of which I made sure I was out of town during.
Then came a rally that may actually have been one for the ages: The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.
I was drawn to the rally because, well, a lot of my friends were going, and rallies, like concerts, mean the off chance of seeing boobs. On Saturday, I was joined by an estimated 200,000 others in showing up and voicing support for, well, something. As a journalist, I am an impartial observer, and maintained a neutral stance on everything that was said. And as an impartial observer, I can tell you that the rally f$%&ing rocked, man.
Mind you, I had arguably the best vantage point for the whole thing, standing at 6’2″, I could easily see over half the people in the crowd, and if I squinted, I could see the performers on the stage four blocks away. The Roots warmed up the crowd until John Legend came out and crapped on the vibe. Then came the Mythbusters, who did the wave with the whole crowd, which was a bad idea, because we were all packed in so tightly raising one’s arms was difficult, much less taking a deep breath.
Eventually, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert came out to entertain. I won’t get into their performances, but I will say that their song, “Greatest, Strongest Country in the World” was a highlight. Indeed, the musical acts were impressive: Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens), Ozzy Osbourne, the O’Jays, Tony Bennett, members of the Armed Forces, Kid Rock, Sheryl Crow, and Two People from Chicago Who No One Has Ever Heard of, Which Leads Me to Believe They Are Banging the Rally Organizers.
But I was also there to observe the crowd. Predictably, many of them were a bit on the crunchy side, and I dare same I may have smelled a controlled substance being smoked. But there were also people in Halloween costumes, including, by my count, 639 Waldos. (I am declaring an end to the Where’s Waldo? costumes at concerts, rallies and other large gatherings. This isn’t Waldo Land, last time I checked, this was still the United States of America, only one Waldo per two pages, please.)
The most entertaining part was watching the hippies try to climb into the trees, as more neutral onlookers made snarky comments about them. Personally, I was hoping to see one of them fall, it would have been the most entertaining thing all day.
What about all of this is historic? Well, probably not a whole lot of the rally itself was up there with the “I Have A Dream Speech” or the anti-Vietnam War rallies, but D.C.’s subway, Metro, broke a 19-year record for trips in a single day, with an estimated 825,437. That’s right, I was part of history.