When Jon Stewart was on Larry King's show talking about his Rally to Restore Sanity, he likened himself to Alice in Wonderland and the rally as the Mad Hatter Tea Party. But is Jon Stewart really Alice, trying to find sanity in an upside-down world? Or is he the March Hare, the ultimate "slacktivist" who thinks it's always teatime -- time to sit back and jibberjabber?
The 10-30-10 rally on the capital's mall is looking more and more like a celebration of "slacktivism." Stewart is courting people who do not want to open their window and yell, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" As he says in the Rally for Sanity website, he's looking for the people who've been "too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs)."
So let's get this straight: people who were so horrified when the U.S. invaded Iraq that they joined millions of others to protest are not sane? We shouldn't speak out against Wall Street bankers whose greed led to millions of Americans losing their jobs and homes? It's irrational to be angry when you see the Gulf of Mexico covered in oil because BP cut corners on safety? Don't get upset when the Supreme Court rules that corporations are people and can pour unlimited funds into our elections?
Stewart often roasts the warmakers and corporate fatcats on his show, but he seems to think that his viewers should be content to take out their frustrations with a good belly laugh.
When Jon Stewart announced the Rally to Restore Sanity, he included CODEPINK among the "loud folks" getting in the way of civil discourse. He also equated progressives calling George Bush a war criminal with right-wingers calling Obama Hitler.
So we started a facebook page asking Jon Stewart to invite us on the show to set the record straight. Beware of what you ask for. We did, indeed, get a call from the producers but it was not for a live interview with Jon Stewart. No, it was for a taped session with myself, a Tea Party organizer and a tear-gas dodging, anti-globalization anarchist "giving advice" to Daily Show's Samantha Bee about how to organize a good rally. It was clear they wanted to portray us as the crazy folks who should not come to their rally for reasonableness.
I consulted with my CODEPINK colleagues. Some said, "Don't do it. It's a trap and will only further marginalize us." We'd already been ridiculed several times on the show, like when we stood up to question General Petraeus at a Congressional hearing or when we organized protests at the Marine Recruiting Center in Berkeley. But the majority of my colleagues thought it would be crazy to decline the chance to get an anti-war message out to millions of viewers.
The producers told us to come to the New York studio "in costume." The anarchist, Legba Carrefour, was all in black, including a black bandanna covering his face. The Tea Partier, Jeffrey Weingarten, came in patriotic red, white and blue. I decided to "go professional", with a CODEPINK t-shirt and a gray suit. The producers were disappointed. They had wanted me to appear in one of the wild outfits we have worn in Congress -- like a hand-lettered pink slip accessorized with a hot-pink boa and a glittery "no war" tiara.
But my attempt to look professional was thwarted by the fourth guest who suddenly appeared and was positioned right behind me: A huge, scary puppet head of Iranian President Ahmadinejad.
So there we were, four "crazies" being quizzed by Samantha Bee for over two hours. She started out with softballs -- what did we stand for, what activities did we engage in. Then the questions and the antics got sillier and sillier. By the end we found ourselves spinning a blind-folded Samantha Bee around, then watching her swing a baseball bat at Ahmadinejad's head to see if was really a pinata.
I'm sure that with over two hours of tape, there will be plenty of footage to turn into a four minute segment showing us as a bunch of nutcases. After all, it is a comedy show.
But it's too bad that Jon Stewart, the liberal comedian, is putting anti-war activists, tea partiers and black bloc anarchists in the same bag. And it's sad that he's telling his audience -- many of whom are young progressive thinkers -- that activism is crazy.
An anonymous assistant on the Daily Show's blog chastized CODEPINK on line. "Dipping hands in fake blood or screaming over everyone just makes you look crazy and then the rest of the country ignores you." He said that we should, instead, focus on solutions.
CODEPINK has been proposing solutions since the day we started. We risked our lives meeting with UN weapons inspectors in Iraq right before the U.S. invaded to see if war could be avoided. We have repeatedly traveled to Afghanistan to push for reconciliation. For the past eight years we have been posing solutions about how to deal with terrorism, how to extricate ourselves from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, how to make us safer at home. Whether under Bush or Obama, our voices of sanity have been drowned out by a war machine that makes billions selling weapons and hiring mercenaries.
Meanwhile, we've witnessed the agony of mothers who have lost their sons in these senseless wars, the unspeakable suffering of our friends in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the lavish spending on war while our schools and hospitals are gutted.
It was because of this insanity that we began to interrupt the war criminals during their public appearances, shouting -- yes, shouting -- for an end to the madness. It was because of this insanity that we put fake blood on our hands to represent the hundreds of thousands of innocents who died as result of their lies. In our post-9/11 24/7 news cycle, we learned that the more audacious and outrageous the action, the more likely we were to get our anti-war message into the national conversation.
For this the Daily Show calls us crazy!
Don't get me wrong. CODEPINK women love to laugh and we try not to take ourselves too seriously. But we do feel that it's the sane people who protest crazy wars, who cry out against the dangers of global warming, who rail against big money in politics, who implore our politicians to spend our resources rebuilding America, not bombing people overseas.
So let's celebrate the people who walk the talk. Slacktivism did not end slavery, activism did. Slacktivism did not get women our rights. Activism did. Slacktivism won't end war or global warming. But activism just might.
Jon Stewart says he wants to restore sanity to Washington; so do we. We'll see you out on the mall, Jon.
Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange. CODEPINK will be organizing a Mad Hatter Tea Party at the Rally to Restore Sanity. To join, click here. Her "interview" with Samantha Bee will be aired on the Daily Show on Thursday.
Follow Medea Benjamin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/medeabenjamin
Rabbi Sid Schwarz: Jon Stewart: We Need More than Amplification
Jon Stewart
Activism is great, much needed to get messages out. But uncivilized people just get marginalized and everyone can shrug them off as crazies. Violence just begets violence
President Obama's Achievements Center
http://obamaachievements.org/list#toc-24
Eight False Things The Public “Knows” Prior To Election Day
http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010104222/false-things-public-knows-they-go-vote
Beware of Polls That Exclude Cell Phone-Only Voters
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/10/19-3
.....and some music while you read, lol ;)
Santana - Put Your Lights On
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5a0OAtzrXE
Here's Stewart's point: When everybody shouts, nobody can hear anything, so shut up!
When you didn't start the hyperbole, but had to join in to be heard, it may feel unfair to be among those told to return to civility. In fact, it IS unfair. Unfortunately, it's also necessary. Some were hyperbolic before others, but everybody has to stop at the same time. There's no other way of returning to civility.
Hurt feelings and quibbling over who started it will only prolong the sorry state of affairs, which every reasonable voice will suffer from.
The bright side is that those who started the hyperbole are the ones who couldn't get their message across any other way. They're the ones who will loose most when the public discourse returns to sanity.
I doubt that Stewart is opposed to activism in all forms, but rather think that he has had his fill with the noisiest public screaming matches. Every reasonable point of view is served if screaming redused to a minimum, including the points of sane activists. Your message will only get across that much clearer.
Obama being Hitler is false on the face of it. With regard to Bush, it's better to call for a trial to prove the point, than to simply call him a war criminal. The two things are comparable only in representing the extremes, which means the progressive extreme is more rational.
I can assure you that, as an "average citizen" who sometimes watches government hearings and the like, your organization's outbursts at such venues have the appearance, in form and function, of the Tea Partier outbursts at the healthcare town hall rallies.
It's only when I investigate after such an event ("What were these people trying to say?") that I find out I'm largely in sympathy with your causes (or out of sympathy with the causes of others).
That's why this is such a difficult problem. I think it's profoundly uncivil that our political system does not provide organizations such as yours adequate access for expressing your views. But I also think that your strategy in response to this unfortunate reality of the system has been to respond in kind -- with incivility.
Is that the only instrument available? I don't know.
I do think, however, that Stewart's rally was a protest against incivility of all forms in our political system, no matter the source. The fact that our system has "forced" your organization (or anyone else's) to practice it was included by implication in the rally.
And frankly, dismissing someone for "Slacktivism" strikes me as just another form of intolerance. That is the epitome, in fact, of taking oneself too seriously -- i.e., demanding this seriousness from others.
I love Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Their programs are great. However, I think the rally to restore sanity was on balance unhelpful. Why? because of the false equivalence implied by the rally between the tea partiers and the "far left," which I personally find very offensive. Principled activists like Medea Benjamin should be celebrated as heroes and have nothing in common with the arch-reactionary neo-fascist racists who make up the tea party leadership. You can dispute code pink's tactics if you like, but organizing a rally because you disagree with the tone of American politics, at a time when the actual laws coming out of DC are so repulsive, strikes me as more than a little bizarre. Moreover, while Stewart may not like to admit it, Republicans in gov't are actually evil and will not work w/ dems on anything other than fighting more wars.
The most ridiculous moment of the rally was Stewart's remark, "why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution...[or]...homophobes who see no one's humanity but their own? Whatever his intention was in making this statement, and I acknowledge there's some debate, the fact is that there are lots of the latter people in the U.S. and they're well-funded and organized, while there is no actual far left which is active in the US ( I wish there were).
Rally2RestoreSanity = false equivalence!
Read it and weep for this nation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/28/obama-foreclosure-program-_n_775553.html
Furthermore, do you really believe there aren't people who take advantage of government services?
Jon raised the bar for himself. I think he took a substantial risk with this. He exposed himself and the rally ultimately as human, and not some caricature. That was it. Be present as a human. Not a spectacle. A caricature. Nor an abstraction.
That's the truth no mater what your cause is.