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Waiting for Sanityman: Can Jon Stewart save America?

The fate of our country won\'t be decided by a politician. It will be determined by a comedian. Not long before Jon Stewart announced his Rally to Restore Sanity, he told a New York magazine writer why he and his crew on \"The Daily Show\" would never do something like that. \"We\'re not activists,\" he said. \"Maybe the nice thing about being a comedian is never having full belief in yourself to know the answer. So you can say all this stuff, but underneath, you\'re going, \'But of course, I\'m f---ing idiotic.\' It\'s why we don\'t lead a lot of marches.\"
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October 13, 2010

The fate of our country won’t be decided by a politician.  It will be determined by a comedian.

Not long before Jon Stewart announced his Rally to Restore Sanity, he told a New York magazine writer why he and his crew on “The Daily Show” would never do something like that. “We’re not activists,” ” target=”_hplink”>page that they’d come, that’s not the same thing as actually showing up on the National Mall on Oct. 30. The Web site Politico, a bellwether of Beltway groupthink, oblivious of saying exactly the kind of thing that Stewart loves to singe, ” target=”_hplink”>asked, “Have Stephen Colbert”—convener of a dueling March to Keep Fear Alive—“and Jon Stewart crossed the line?” Warning that “at a certain point even sarcasm jumps the shark,” the writer—who “would eat a bowl of broken glass just to touch the hem of Stewart or Colbert’s pants”—nevertheless cautioned that “it’s tough to tread in the muck of parody and not wind up bearing an uncanny resemblance to the things we despise,” and that unless the rally motivates a Democratic get-out-the-vote effort, it will be “a Comedy Central-fueled ego trip.”

What made Stewart change his mind? Clever promotion for “” target=”_hplink”>calling for an end to all the shouting and divisiveness: “We are not red states and blue states; we are the United States of America.” This is the Stewart whose “

Read more about Jon Stewart here.

When he ” target=”_hplink”>segment in which he told Bernie Goldberg and his Fox News colleagues, “Go f—- yourselves.” Including his own cameo was his way of giving a sly shout-out to the other Jon Stewart, the take-no-prisoners host of “The Daily Show.” That Stewart—Jugular Jon—is the one who ” target=”_hplink”>Obama and Democrats when he thinks they deserve it, which is surprisingly often. Nor does he inhabit a bubble. He goes out of his way to invite the Mike ” target=”_hplink”>Armeys onto his show, the better to wipe the floor with them in person.

Now I’m all for civil discourse and the search for common ground. Sanityman is right: The noisy outliers in our nation make such terrific ratings bait, and politicians and bullies are so thoroughly reliant on wedge issues that polarize us, that when most people look in the media mirror, they don’t see themselves. So it’s great that reasonableness will get a few hours on the Mall, with Colbert’s blowhard to spice up the picnic. 

But I’ll be bummed if Sanityman succeeds in throwing a wet blanket on Jugular Jon’s fire. I’m not convinced that what we need now is Bipartisan Barack 2.0, and it appears that neither, thank goodness, is the president. I don’t know if it’s too late, but I’m glad the Obama who got played over and over again by his nihilistic opposition seems to be

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