Ironically, we were unafraid

By now the pundits have weighed in on the Comedy Central Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Either he wasted an opportunity to engage middle-of-the-road folks who are turned off by politics and do not vote. Or his rally was simply an exercise in irony and too-cool-for-school self awareness. On the one hand, the rally didn't do enough to stir people to action in tomorrow's election. On the other, nobody really watches cable news, so why get so worked up about his media criticism? Yet the press, obviously, was annoyed.
We watched almost the entire rally live, giving the house a sedentary vibe so weird for a Saturday that my daughter said it felt like Thanksgiving Day and the Macy's Parade. I would have gone if I could have. But alas, not enough money. (Although I briefly considered hopping a freight train chugging slowly past our house.)
Apparently no one knew what to expect. Some news organizations wouldn't let their reporters attend (on their own time off) out of fear of being partisan. Yet the very non-partisan appeal to reason and moderation also kept it from getting huge amounts of prominent space.
And they all have good points (she said, reasonably.)
But it's too bad that no one talked about the opposing force of the rally, as personified by Stephen Colbert. It's too bad nobody mentioned the fear.
Because that is what I think the rally was really about. How can any of us maintain that go-get 'em American spirit in the face of seemingly overwhelming fear about every possible thing, 24 hours a day?
I don't mean just the fear you see hyped on the evening news--the child predators, avian flu, carcinogens in the drinking water. The heartbreak of psoriasis. I'm talking about the very real fear many of us have now, of waking one morning without a job, or health insurance, or a home because of forces beyond our control.
Colbert, in character as a faux conservative TV host, made a pretty good opening, supposedly cowering beneath the stage in an underground bunker. I've felt like that, after looking at our budget and counting the days until my daughter looks toward college. How can you get up the guts to spend the money on night school, or invest in your own business or apply for a new job when you're worried you may get thrown out of the house you've paid on for a decade? How can you dare to take the risks involved in improving your station in life?
It's fear, plain and simple, that is the paralyzing force that hobbles us and keeps us from being the great nation we used to be. FDR had it exactly right. Right now we have the realistic fears about joblessness. And on top of that, we have all the other fears pumped up by people who want to sell us something or force us into an ideology.
So yeah. If you wanted the rally to be a call to action against certain political parties, then it probably was a failure. But me, I looked at all those people on the mall--250,000 by some estimates. Out of that many, a lot are probably as scared as I am right now. And yet here we are, able to enjoy a sunny Saturday, laugh at a few jokes, forget about our troubles for a couple of hours.
Some say that's irony.
I say it feels like optimism.

So on with the laughs. Here's the latest, an Auto-Tune send up of Stewart's closing speech: