Rally To Restore Sanity's Roots: 'Real America'

For the next couple of weeks, we'll be celebrating the upcoming Rally To Restore Sanity/March To Keep Fear Alive by highlighting the ways in which "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" have long advocated reasonableness. You're invited to take part! Remember a "moment of sanity" that was dear to you? Send me an email and tell me about it!

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Multiple readers and several colleagues want to highlight Jon Stewart's serial skewering of the "Real America" trope, in which conservative commentators and politicians go out of their way to slag off large portions of America as being insufficiently "American" as the people who -- coincidentally, I'm sure! -- tend to deliver electoral college votes to the GOP. Poor New York City really can't catch a break, you know? Do we rally around New Yorkers because of the 9/11 attacks? Or do we make residents of the five boroughs out to be the secret enemy of the state! It really depends on the political season.

Nevertheless, it gets Stewart's back up and appropriately so. Take that time Sarah Palin said this:

PALIN: We believe that the best of America is in the small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation.

That elicited this reaction from Stewart: "So, if small towns are 'real America,' that would make big cities, like Washington, DC and New York City, the capitals of 'fake America.' The epicenter of 'fake America'... the, the... what's the word I'm looking for? The 'Ground Zero,' if you will, of 'anti-America.' I bet bin Laden feels like a real asshole."

It's some of the most painfully incivil stuff in the world, and happily, the folks over at "The Daily Show" have made a "real America" mash-up that does credit to their defense of all Americans.

Someone will probably say that all of you folks that are coming to the Rally aren't "real Americans," either!

WATCH:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
On Topic: In the News - The Real America
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

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Comments

[Bunnie Koch]

01:58 AM on 10/31/2010

A MUST SEE youtube video re. baggers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnUfPQVOqpw

[preatorius]

09:06 PM on 10/30/2010

What if we boycotted broadcast news for a week? Would they change their tactics?!!!

[goldgoose]

03:39 PM on 10/30/2010

Sanity is greatly overrated! There is, of course, a great deal of evidence that sanity does not even exist. Face it! If sanity was a reality, there would be no ridiculous candidates for responsible Congressional office in 2010, like candidates who threaten armed rebellion if they lose, candidates whose only qualification for office is leading a movement to convince Americans not to masturbate, or candidates who have thugs stomping on the heads of demonstrators who oppose them.
There will be some conclusions drawn on Tuesday; will Americans vote to move ahead or will they retreat to the Bush mentality of the first 8 years of the 21ST Century that destroyed the values, the reputation, and the economy of the American democratic Republic.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, ironically, have done more than anyone else to keep the flicker of sanity alive in America.

[shilparules]

02:49 PM on 10/30/2010

Gov. Sarah Palin is so amazingly beautiful, and Jon Stewart is so powerfully emetic.

[PunDyt]

06:12 PM on 10/30/2010

Half-term pull the ripcord and chase the cash and snipe from sidelines Gov Sarah Palin is so amazingly shallow in her discourse, articulation and base of knowledge, and Jon Stewart is so at the top of his game, with satire, well-honed points, and criticism served upon, deservedly, both sides of the political divide.

[Nick2]

11:24 PM on 10/30/2010

She's unintelligent, divisive, and incapable of speaking in complete sentences. Jon is funny, smart, sexy and doesn't put down 3/4s of the United States every time he opens his mouth. Sarah Palin finds something to *hate* about everyone and everything. She can take her Real America and put it where she hides her dictionary of American English.

[Godweiser]

02:45 PM on 10/30/2010

The part of Not "Real America" where I come from is where the first battles of the War of Independence were fought. So stick that in your pipe and suck on it, "Real America."

[jaslyn]

12:04 PM on 10/30/2010

Palin has always been the voice of divisiveness disguised as being patriotic. She's the queen of the run on sentence, throwing mud on the wall, hoping that anything will stick. She wants to enrich herself, like Beck, by using the tactics of fear and anger to enrage her fans and bond them closer to her. It's really a sick, symbiotic relationship.

[Tim McCown]

11:52 AM on 10/30/2010

Yeh Right Wingers like Sarah Palin are the real Americans that is why they support tax policies that redistribute vast amounts of money from the Middle Class to the Richest 1% of America. They support tax policies that give tax breaks to large Corporations that out source American jobs to other nations taking jobs from Middle Class America then to add insult to injury they support legislation that enables banks to foreclose on Middel Class Americans even easier. They support removing laws that would provide criminal penalties for corporations that have created an illegal economy with 20 million illegal jobs so they could evade US tax law, US workplace wage, hour and safety laws and once again cost millions of Americans their jobs. Then they are so American they scape goated the immigrants that were brought in by the large corporations who were breaking the law and wanted to hold the immigrants responsible for Corporate law breaking. All I can say to Right Wingers is that real Americans build up the nation they don't sell it off for personal profit so don't wave your phony Tea Bag patriotism in my face.

[smarti]

12:18 AM on 10/31/2010

Fanned and faved! Best line:
"All I can say to Right Wingers is that real Americans build up the nation they don't sell it off for personal profit so don't wave your phony Tea Bag patriotism in my face. "

Says it all right there!

[venice6]

11:02 AM on 10/30/2010

Jon Stewart is on of the most Pro American Patriot people on television in the USA.

I wish America could celebrate a " Restore Sanity Day " every year, as a reality check.

[AprilPA]

09:59 AM on 10/30/2010

I'm sick and tire of blue state "fake America" being forced to provide welfare in the form of federal taxes to red state "real America".

http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/266.html

[osiris65]

05:47 AM on 10/30/2010

If you're Black you're really not a real american. We're only 14th amendment citizens. So that makes us only second class citizens according to teabaggers want to repeal the 14th amendment.
What a fool I must have been serving the last 21yrs of my life in the military. Fighting for teabaggers. (real americans) Sigh. Of course at one time we were only considered to be only 3/5 of a man. from a teabagger's perspective, I'm not even human let alone american.

[Eraser]

09:36 AM on 10/30/2010

The majority of the population are only citizens because of the 14th ammendment, being children of immigrants who've come here since the 14th ammendment was passed.

And their ignorance makes you no less of a man, only them.

[IhateNeoCons]

11:45 AM on 10/30/2010

No, that isn't true, although it does seem to be the prevailing opinion on the 14th amendment. The 14th amendment is there to forcefully and completely eradicate all of the un-constitutional Ante-Bellum laws propping up slavery. With regard to citizenship, the 14th merely serves as a measure of legal efficiency preventing endless teabaggery of the new laws to create a de facto slavery post-war. Of course we all know that this is indeed what eventually happened, but this was the result of the courts refusing to enforce the law as written in the 14th. Just because people behaved hideously in the past and they created a pretense of legality around it doesn't mean it was in fact legal. After-all, all men are created equal. If certain men are not considered to fill that requirement due to specious racial arguments, then all women regardless of race would be stripped of citizenship, perhaps children as well. It is unfortunate that in the 21st century there are still people (I use that term VERY loosely) who will play word games in order to try and institutionalize their petty hatreds. But one thing they don't get to do is claim it is legal, regardless of whatever kangaroo court version of a government

[Psyko Tek]

12:50 AM on 10/30/2010

I KNOW I AM A REAL AMERICAN

you know why?

I couldn't understand the math thingy he put up there

[ariveria]

09:34 PM on 10/29/2010

real americans are the patriotic americans who support liberal/conservative positions and want to make america better.

the fake americans are the anti american conservative/republican/teabaggers with their cant do attitude.

can you image rush in the 50s "now the government wants to spend billions of your hard earned tax dollars to build an interstate highway system. what is wrong with the roads we have today? think of the billions of dollars wasted on this new highway system. think of the hundreds of millions of acres of private property seized by the government to build this unnecessary highway system. a massive new set of taxes, massive new government programs and a massive government seizure of private property.

or beck in the 60s. now they want to put a man on the moon. how are they going to do that with massive new taxes. scientists are in disagreement. many say it is impossible to send a man to the moon. their is no way a man can survive on the moon. then lets look at the bible earth to mankind not a word about the moon. also we can look at the constitution nowhere does it talk about the moon or space. we had to stop the new taxes designed for a government take over of the moon and space.

"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada," Sarah Palin March 8, 2010
come on sarah where were you born. Show us the birthcertificate

[mary h forrest]

12:59 AM on 10/25/2010

what do we have to do to get rid of Sarah Palin?

[RetNav]

12:44 PM on 10/30/2010

Ignore her and vote.

[Nelle]

01:48 PM on 10/22/2010

Every time I hear the words "small town America" I think of those people that long for the so-called good ol' days of the 1940's and 1950's which struggled with prejudices of all kinds. Small towns are not without their own bigotry. I guess to point that out would be un-American. It would also shatter conservative's fantasy vision of small towns.

[ariveria]

09:35 PM on 10/29/2010

i like the 50s

taxes on the rich at 90% large union membership and economic growth with prosperity.

we need to return to the values of high taxes and strong unions that made the 50s great.

"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada," Sarah Palin March 8, 2010
come on sarah where were you born. Show us the birth certificate

[AprilPA]

10:03 AM on 10/30/2010

That's what I love about the 1950s too, taxes on the rich at 91% and unions. No one accused Eisenhower of being a socialist.

[Godweiser]

02:55 PM on 10/30/2010

The 1950's they long for are the ones on TV, not what really happened in the 1950's.

[StansDad]

10:44 AM on 10/22/2010

I wonder how many Main streets are piles of ash in iraq and afghanistan? Some folkey charm she has alright.. monsters all of them