Rally To Restore Sanity's Roots: 'Crank Up The Crazy And Rip Off The Knob' (VIDEO)

For the next few days, 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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We've got to give America's Clown Prince of Fearmongering, Stephen Colbert, his due in the lead up to the Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear as well, and so we turn our attention back to March 4, 2009. Glenn Beck had just shown America the interior of his id-soaked "War Room," where he got down to the business of gaming out unlikely scenarios of disaster and woe so that his viewers would be more likely to jump at the sight of their own shadows and get heavily invested in cash-for-gold scams. Colbert liked what he saw, but basically saw it merely as a good start to some top-flight paranoia stoking.

So, Colbert got himself a doom bunker, some scary graphics, and some even more unlikely scenarios, all in the service of teaching Glenn how to "crank up the crazy and rip off the knob." Someday soon, maybe all of our news reports will look like this, and I will make a killing selling bathtub Klonopin to the masses.

WATCH PART ONE:

PART TWO:

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Comments

[DoctorGreeves]

06:23 AM on 10/30/2010

Frankly, a rally to rekindle fear may be to rigorous for some of us. Couldn't we have a picnic to celebrate uneasiness instead?

[NorCalSurfer]

03:09 PM on 10/30/2010

Nicely put.

I would fan, and will fan you later. After you have lost that respectable number, I don't ahve the heart to change it. Soon to be fan #422

[SangZe]

11:51 AM on 10/27/2010

. . . full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

[Chip W]

08:46 AM on 10/27/2010

Scenario 5
2014. Glen Beck and Sarah Palin are our President and Vice President, though Beck ahs renamed his title to Demagogue of the Universe.
Government regulation in the economy has been outlawed.
Progressives have all been confined to reeducation camps.
Fear of Bad Things is a required course, like Social Studies, but starting in 1st grade.
Eugenics is being used to create a superior race of free market Republicans.
The unproductive has been left to die, like they deserve. The rich are subsidized, like they deserve.
Nature has been declared the Enemy of Man.
Of course, this could never happen, but what if it does?

[NorCalSurfer]

03:11 PM on 10/30/2010

What if it does? you mean, it hasn't happen yet? What have we been seeing then? Your list is almost ready to fuit, only a couple more to go.

[Dadeo]

05:16 AM on 10/27/2010

Glennda will be there manning a booth selling freeze dried everything.

[Turtlenews]

04:21 AM on 10/27/2010

Glen will have his goons in the crowd wearing Obama T Shirts in order to cause disturbances and fights

[kaptaintripps]

08:03 PM on 10/26/2010

Just go to your own Evangelical, snake-swallowing, silly, Conservative-Chr!st!an chalkboard to explain it, you dipchit...

[bluzebud]

01:22 PM on 10/27/2010

You are so classy.

[kaptaintripps]

05:53 PM on 10/27/2010

And so are you,, bluzbud. Tr0ll.

[kaptaintripps]

06:17 PM on 10/27/2010

Oh, chit. Do you mean because I have the audacity to pick on slavering, stewpid Chr!st!ans...? DUH.

[Rangergirl]

04:20 PM on 10/26/2010

NO Glenda, the crazies were at your rally

[GHARDY]

03:40 PM on 10/26/2010

I can not wait until saturday, This rally is going to be off the hook, hope to see you all in D.C.

[YouDontWantMeHere]

03:13 PM on 10/26/2010

i'm tired of tryin' ta make sense can i run for Congress?

[Rick Goodner]

05:32 PM on 10/26/2010

Well if you can't make sense of anything you will have to run as a Teabagging GOPer. :-)

[floridaray]

01:35 PM on 10/26/2010

The Republicans have been selling fear since the 50's. Now they have a rodeo clown to REALLY get the lunatic fringe worked up . He needs more rehab.

[Chris3131]

01:42 PM on 10/26/2010

So when Obama claimed the universe would collapse if we didn't pass an almost $1 trillion stimulus RIGHT NOW, that wasn't selling fear?

[Tulka2]

02:01 PM on 10/26/2010

That is the goofiest number yet. Congrats.

[Rick Goodner]

02:12 PM on 10/26/2010

No... It worked Cupcake...
shouldn't you be watching Beck right now? :-)

[Jerry Barry]

01:51 AM on 10/30/2010

I think he needs to start drinking again so the world will come back into focus inside his tiny, parnoid mind.

[notdarkyet]

11:39 AM on 10/26/2010

Colbert has, since the inception of his show, highlighted how we should fear one of the most dangerous animals around-bears. Since Palin and her band of merry women have dubbed themselves mama grizzlies, I think he was right.

[Rick Goodner]

02:14 PM on 10/26/2010

The funny thing about the fear the bears thing is that Colbert calls "O'Really" Papa Bear it is the best missed joke ever :-)

[ydrittmann]

07:18 PM on 10/26/2010

She is truly "a godless killing machine".

[exhale09]

11:22 AM on 10/26/2010

Glenn Beck is either a very mentally disturbed man or he is an opportunist con artist.

What he "isn't" is sane, or good for America. He is a dangerous man. He intentionally make's people afraid and then preys on their fears for his own personal profits.

He speaks about outrageous doom and gloom scenarios and then sells you gold coins not worth the price you pay for them.
He predicts terrifying end times and then he tries to SELL you back pack survival kits, good for two weeks worth of freeze dried beef stroganoff for you survival.

He tells you we have lost our freedoms and have to protect ourselves from our now "Socialist" Government, while HE is using HIS Freedom of speech on our FREE media, and at his Government protected protest rallies against the very Government protecting his right to FREELY speak and protest...while HE is collecting his Capitalist profits and lives in his million dollar home in his walled in compound/estate, while getting wealthier on your gullibility.

Look around you. Do you actually see the dooms day horror that Glenn Beck terrifies you about?

Where is it? It's in Glenn Beck's sick demented delusional mind!

What do you see with your own eyes? Will you be going to express YOUR RIGHT to "freely vote" in a few days? Are you FREELY going to the church of your choice on Sunday?

This man is USING you.

[homer winslow]

11:39 AM on 10/26/2010

But, but, but, there's a black man in the white house.

[Chip W]

08:25 AM on 10/27/2010

No, that's beside the point. Race has absolutely nothing to do with the blind, raging, vehement hatred of Obama.

[Estreet1964]

02:02 PM on 10/26/2010

I admire you for trying to reason with the rubes but you know it's pointless.

Without their fear and their messiah, the drooling masses would have nothing.

[mombabytiger]

11:16 AM on 10/26/2010

Most of my family is going to this rally and I would too except for my fondness for chairs and bathrooms and food. I just hope this is well-controlled and doesn't backfire on us this close to such an important election. Not everyone will get the fact that it's supposed to be humorous.

[homer winslow]

11:41 AM on 10/26/2010

It is really about more than humor. It is about showing that not everyone in America is a paranoid or a fear monger or a hater. It is about the continuation of the great experiment in democracy.

[Rick Goodner]

02:22 PM on 10/26/2010

I hear it was about this guy who excaped from the nut house who have a hook for a hand... or foot I can't remember... but he hangs this girl's boyfriend in a tree... or the borfriend was hung like a tree... I can't remember.... I heard it is band camp

[Puffin16]

10:27 AM on 10/26/2010

Since fear has worked so well for organized religion all these years, Beck thought he'd give it a try and found out that it works.

[PrecooledToast]

10:25 AM on 10/26/2010

he just loves his country.....im sorry....i.....i promised myself i wouldn't do this...