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215,000 at Rally to Restore Sanity: Bring on the Families
Rallying for sanity and/or fear
Somewhere between 215,000 and 6 billion people attended the Rally to Restore Sanity on Saturday, depending on your source (CBS News or Stephen Colbert’s Twitter feed). It might not have been optimally-timed for families with young trick-or-treating kids, but plenty of people did bring their children to the event to celebrate sanity and/or fear on the National Mall.
It may have started as a spoof on Glenn Beck’s Rally to Restore Honor — and Stewart definitely conjured up the sentiment when he said to the crowd, “We live in hard times, not end times” — but the event took on a life of its own, and by all accounts dwarfed the estimated 80,000 crowd size at Beck’s rally in August (this based on Airphotoslive.com — here’s a picture of the Beck rally).
So the question is, did it get people (young and old) fired up for tomorrow?
The rally was well timed to inject some energy into the voting turnout on Tuesday — and I think it worked.
In the run-up to the rally, Stewart joked that you should arrange for babysitting that day, but lots of families skipped that and had the kids in tow.
Sounds great to me — the kids were part of something meaningful and got to see thousands of people coming together to to talk and exchange ideas. I also think the atmosphere of satire and comedy set a good tone and precedent for kids — rallying doesn’t mean screaming and drumming up fear, it means pulling together people and ideas based on rational thought and human decency. I wish my family could have been there.
Image: flickr/cliff 1066
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6 Comments
Anon commented on Nov 01 10 at 2:12 pmThe Rally to Restore Sanity was not held in the same portion of the mall as Beck’s rally. There is no pool on the east end.
That aside, I was there — and it seemed like way more than 200,000 to me!
Gretchen Powers commented on Nov 01 10 at 2:33 pmI like Jon Stewart and the message of the rally, but it’s not a big thing to point out that more people came to it than came to Beck’s (who I can’t stand). The DC-metro area is filled with educated, upper-middle-class people who are Stewart/Colbert fans. They didn’t have to travel that far to come, so they are automatically going to have more people right there. As far as timing goes, I actually am/was fearful that the rally took people away who would be working to convince people to vote Democrat at home (if they came to DC). Anyway, I think they put on a clever show, but I’m not sure the how many of the audience members got the message…there seems to be alot of snideness and lack of outreach to the blockhead working classes who seem to go for the teaparty stuff…
heatherturgeon commented on Nov 01 10 at 2:39 pmthank you for pointing this out about the pool – and the first person gauge on the numbers!
Megan A commented on Nov 01 10 at 2:39 pmMy daughter had a better view than me, from her Daddy’s shoulders. She had a blast. It was her birthday and she had a shirt announcing it in a comical way. She loved showing it to everyone and seeing them laugh.
Megan A commented on Nov 01 10 at 2:40 pmoh I agree, it seemed like way more than 200,000 and I also know that more than a few people were unable to reach the rally due to the crowds on the metro. Bet they were not counted in the number.
Amanda commented on Nov 01 10 at 8:21 pmWhere in the world did you get the 80,000 number for the Beck rally? Look at shots of the two rallies side by side ; there were clearly more people at the Beck rallly than the Stewart rally, whether you want to admit it or not.
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