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Go Home Jon Stewart Isn't Enough

POLITICS NOVEMBER 1, 2010

Jon Stewart Isn't Enough

BY MICHAEL KAZIN

Demonstrators have been coming to Washington since Coxey’s Army trudged up the steps of the Capitol during the depression of the 1890s. So it was probably inevitable that the traditional repertoire of protest would, by now, have grown rather stale. These days, passionate orators, earnest singers, and fist-shaking marches down the National Mall rarely matter much. The “One Nation” rally held by the NAACP, labor unions, and other liberal groups on a perfect day in early October barely managed to fill the lawns around the Reflecting Pool and offered no coherent message other than hostility toward the Tea Parties and their favorite candidates. Most of the nation probably didn’t even know the event had occurred. In contrast, Glenn Beck’s call to “Restore Honor” drew twice as many people, nearly all of whom were united by the strong twin desires to crush the left and praise the Lord. Still, even with its clear purpose and large turnout, the rally slipped from the limelight very quickly.

This weekend, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s massive “Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear” was, at least, a novel sort of political demonstration. And I do mean political. Granted, Stewart and his merry band of satirists, as promised, presented themselves as the bards of civil discourse and didn’t suggest how people should vote this year—or whether they should vote at all. They talked, and/or joked, about how to think, not what to think. Yet nearly every sign I saw and conversation I had, or overheard, among the masses gathered near the Capitol confirmed what should have been obvious to anyone who has ever watched The Daily Show or The Colbert Report: This was a liberal crowd of mostly young, white people who voted for Obama and are contemptuous of his conservative opponents.

The sign-makers in particular were the most political—as well as funny and refreshing—parts of the rally. They imitated Stewart’s clever put-downs of the right while eschewing his plea for reasonableness: “I masturbate, and I vote”; “You’re mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore”; “Glenn Beck: Show Us Your High-School Diploma”; “Trickle Down Economics is a Golden Shower”; “Support the Separation of Corporation and State”; “Homophobia is Gay.” Two young women dressed as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles carried signs that read, “Please don’t fear my Muslim Garb.” (It was, after all, the day before Halloween.) One of the best posters I saw took the sanity meme to heart but was clearly directed against alarmists like Beck who traffic in absurd historical metaphors: On it were pasted two identical photos of Adolf Hitler connected by an equal sign.

Indeed, the key question coming out of this rally—which was only a moderate success, considering the wretched sound system, the paucity of Jumbotrons, and the odd musical coupling of Ozzy Osbourne and Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens—isn’t whether it was political. The question is whether liberalism, so clearly on the display at the event, can grow on a diet of irony, satire, and sarcasm mixed with appeals to  “common sense.”

Stewart’s concluding remarks, in which he denied that “our country is on the brink of catastrophe, torn by polarizing hate” and asserted that “we work together to get things done every damn day,” reminded me of Obama’s keynote speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004. “There are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes,” announced the state senator from Chicago in his bravura debut on the national stage. He then went on to upbraid the “pundits” who “like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states” but ignore that “we worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.”

That message helped elect Obama president. But, since he’s been in the White House, Obama’s reasonable rhetoric and pleas for bipartisanship have mostly been thrown back in his remarkably calm face. And the results of the midterm elections will make clear that the divide between “blue” and “red” America is as deep as ever, even if the chasm doesn’t fall neatly along state lines. After failing this president, appeals to focus on common sense and common ground, no matter how wittily conveyed by comedians, will likely not bring liberals any more success in the future.      

Civility is a fine and pleasant thing, but it has never inspired a serious political or social movement—or revived the fortunes of a president. Irony and satire can be potent modes of persuasion, but what do Stewart and Colbert’s liberal supporters want to persuade their fellow Americans to actually think or do? The Comedy Central duo has done a reasonable job highlighting what they think is wrong with our system of government, the people seeking to influence it, and the media covering it. But time spent by liberal rally-goers and Daily Show viewers complaining about how politics is conducted would be better spent deciding what issues to promote, fight for, and win. In a time of economic crisis and fears of national decline, it is not enough to make fun of the lies and sloppy thinking of the right. People need to engage in the political process to reform and push it forward, not agree that we’re all more reasonable than the media portray us and promise to behave civilly.

Like it or not, America remains a nation of true believers. Secular liberals with a decent sense of humor will have to learn, or relearn, how to adapt to that reality and turn it to their advantage. Or they can just pick up their remotes and watch Comedy Central.

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29 comments

Well said. How about a Rally to End the Fillibuster? Or a Rally to End Corporate Control of Congress? Or a Rally for Jobs?

- AaronW

November 1, 2010 at 1:06am

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Forgive the length, but the following point does not appear nearly enough in conversations here: Perhaps some of the signs indicated the political intentions of many in crowd, but the message of others and certainly on stage was a paradigmatically liberal message. In our everyday lives we work with another and accord the respect each deserves (such as when merging into the Lincoln Tunnel), and the purpose of public institutions is to facilitate this interaction and overcome structural divides that threaten the balance of interests. Progressive liberals insist the state has a further role, but delivered by Stewart, and similarly the Obama of the 2004 DNC, was an honest liberal sentiment. Liberalism is emphatically anti-political, it's the reason why progressivism appears so odd in conjunction with it. Where collective good is considered a condition for the pursuit of individual interest and that the state is more than protector of civil society, arbiter of justice, and police/military, the specifically liberal message fades. In that case, the state/civil society is not simply an aggregate of individuals coordinating their actions. Perhaps it's why Americans are often confused about what being "liberal" is. What frustrates the left is that Obama appeared in 2008 to want to lead a seminar but a movement, inaugurating a new politics on the left. Stewart shares the same impulse but does not have the pretension to lead, instead from him we straight away get the classic liberal invitation to rational discourse. Finding common ground or respectfully disagreeing is the essence of liberal public life, all intended to arrive at compromise and problems solved such that we may harmonize our continued pursuit of interests. But this is not politics, it is the eschewal of politics. The success of rightist populism has been its direction, its barely articulated vision (but vision nonetheless) to fundamentally alter existing public institutions, even if veiled in preservationist rhetoric. Certainly, a John Stewart rally is not what the left needs, which is a real politics, a movement with a coherent vision and partisans willing to lead it and fill its ranks. Yet fulfilling such a need was far from the rally's purpose; it simply wanted to remind the nation of its liberal assumptions, that through calm conversation all can be comfortable to live their lives in oblivion.

- brjenkins

November 1, 2010 at 3:58am

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Must be too late to be writing commentary... Edit: instead of "What frustrates the left....", What frustrates the left is that Obama appeared in 2008 to want not to lead a seminar but a movement, inaugurating a new politics on the left.

- brjenkins

November 1, 2010 at 4:01am

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brjenkins: Liberalism is not anti-political. Politics, regardless of how many elected officials imply so by angrily declaring their opponents are "playing politics," is not influence peddling, corruption, or ignoring serious issues in favor of sound bytes and photo ops. Politics is the pursuit of the common good. Our politicians aren't very good at it, but politics is what we elect them to do. I'm a liberal, and I love politics.

- janus

November 1, 2010 at 8:51am

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Thank you, Michael Kazin, for saying clearly what I felt watching the rally. This was our answer to Glenn Beck? It was so bland, so uncontroversial, so politically correct, with none of the bite of their respective TV shows Who could take exception to any of it? Republicans and Tea-partiers must have been laughing up their sleeves grateful for the inoffensiveness and wimpiness of their opponents. Otherwords weekly columnist Donald Kaul said it better in one column than the rally did in three hours. In a column entitled "Screwball election: So many wackos running for office", said: "A bad economy might make voters angry, but it shouldn't make them crazy. Why, all of a sudden, do we have Republican candidates who look like directors of the Flat Earth Society?" and much more in that vein. I am near despair for the gullibility and lemming tendencies of our electorate.

- JackR

November 1, 2010 at 10:10am

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So whats the plan to end the filibuster, pass stimulus bills, end (in BHO's terminology) stupid foreign wars you cant win (in Eisenhower's terminolgy), pass real health reform, pass real financial reform?? There is no good or sure plan--- any more than absolute opposition to BHO was a sure plan in 3/09. [ His political stupidity made it a good plan.] Whatever plan you have for Dem recovery--- it better include getting rid (politically) of BHO, Reid, 5-8 other timid Blue Dog Senators, and 30-50 Blue Dog House members. The Repubs are about to take some giant steps to solve that problem for Dems. The next step is how to retire BHO?? Because BHO's lack of political skills and political philosophy once in office is really the root of the problem. So far, not enough Dems are openly aware that (say) Franken (or some governor yet unnamed) vs Palin compared to BHO vs Palin is really a better choice for Dems in 2012 --- no matter who wins either of those hypothetical races in 2012. The real hope is that whoever wins in 2016 is a rejection of the political philosophies (such as they are)and political styles of both BHO and Palin.

- drofnats1

November 1, 2010 at 10:59am

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I thought of Stewart's closing remarks and the event as a whole as a smallish attempt to break the rhetorical gridlock of public 'debate.' No more. I don't think Stewart, et.al., would disagree that merely agreeing to 'civility' will solve anything or that liberals shouldn't stake out goals and positions with ferocity.

- dmillstone

November 1, 2010 at 11:26am

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AaronW: I'd happily get back in my car to drive to the Rally to End the Filibuster, or to End Corporate Control of Congress, or for Jobs. But the tough question is how many of the legions who thronged the Mall on Saturday would do so. And the answer, I'm afraid, is: not a whole lot. The culture is not conducive to such Seriousness. The Serious caucus which we inhabit has to piggyback on the Sanity and/or Fear crowd--for now.

- toddgitlin

November 1, 2010 at 11:49am

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Yes, the big problem with Stewart's concept is that he misunderstands the problem. The problem isn't a lack of civility on both sides. The problem is that the good side is being stymied by the nutso side. That's obvious. I wouldn't mind branding the good side as the "sane" side. It's true after all. But at a certain point, one needs to be explicit that this means voting for Democrats. Of course, if Stewart were like Olbermann or Maddow, he wouldn't be "the most trusted man in America." He would be dismissed as just another yeller, except from the left. Such is our stupid political "conversation" in which only the idiots talk substance.

- JakeH

November 1, 2010 at 12:46pm

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Nick Cohen from across the Atlantic has something to say: http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/3551?page=1 Jon Stewart's Rally for Sanity yesterday featured Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens singing "Peace Train". Islam/Stevens previously showed his commitment to peace and sanity by saying that death was the appropriate punishment for Salman Rushdie's "blasphemy". He has tried to wiggle out of it and issued all kinds of denials. [--] What "Cat" ought to have done was apologise to Rushdie and commit himself to the right to criticise power in whatever form it takes, but he has not and American leftists have yet to learn that they cannot be a little bit liberal. They can't denounce the idiocy of Fox and ignore the idiocies of religion. Maybe they will never learn. I'm close to giving up. PS Just had this message from Rushdie: "I've always liked Stewart and Colbert but what on earth was Cat Yusuf Stevens Islam doing on that stage? If he's a "good Muslim" like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar then I'm the Great Pumpkin. Happy Halloween."

- noga1

November 1, 2010 at 1:10pm

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Noga, agree on Cat Stevens, love Rushdie's retort, agree that liberals should be catholic in their denunication of idiocy, but I'll start to question your Americanness if you persist in your apologising and criticising. Your true colours are showing.

- JakeH

November 1, 2010 at 1:19pm

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p.s. It sounded before like I was saying Olbermann and Maddow are idiots. I don't actually think this. So, let me apologise. I just meant that you can't answer (crazy) substance with fluff and expect to make an impact.

- JakeH

November 1, 2010 at 1:21pm

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The Cat Stevens thing gave me pause too. I'd assumed he'd repented in some meaningful way. Was I wrong?

- dmillstone

November 1, 2010 at 1:38pm

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"...but I'll start to question your Americanness if you persist in your apologising and criticising. Your true colours are showing." This is a gem of a comment, jakeH. Scratch a pious "Democrat" and find a McCarthyite. And there is a humongous assumption there, btw.

- noga1

November 1, 2010 at 2:17pm

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There are two different interests here. One is to promote a particular point of view, which Kazin and several commenters are correct to state that those who think that way would want. The other is to promote a rational way to arrive at one's point of view, which everyone should want. While there are no illegitimate points of view, there are illegitimate arguments for those points of view, and for now, the right is more prone to embrace points of view based on illegitimate arguments than the left. As for a rally to "end the filibuster, pass stimulus bills, etc." I'd settle for getting the Republicans to rationally evaluate whether the stimulus resulting in unemployment being less or more that it would be without. If the Republicans moved from saying that the stimulus had no effect on unemployment to saying that keeping unemployment at 9% instead of allowing it to mushroom to 12% was not worth $1 trillion I'd say that they would have a legitimate opinion and try to convince the public to prefer otherwise. However, I suspect that that frame would make it harder to keep their troops in line in opposition.

- sighthnd

November 1, 2010 at 2:19pm

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"...and for now, the right is more prone to embrace points of view based on illegitimate arguments than the left." "The 100 Best Signs At The Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear " #24 is an interesting illustration of the quoted statement: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-100-best-signs-at-the-rally-to-restore-sanity/

- noga1

November 1, 2010 at 2:44pm

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Well, Jon Stewart is not a politician. I think he provided a necessary balance to the nuttiness on the right especially in the rabble-rousing media. It would be nice though if we saw some enthusiasm from our President.

- Sophia

November 1, 2010 at 3:14pm

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Sophia: "It would be nice though if we saw some enthusiasm from our President." Heck, it would have been nice to have seen some enthusiams from African Americans. I was there, it was the whitest crowd I've ever seen outside the Salt Lake City airport. The left can't criticize Tea Parties rally on that count anymore - "The Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear", aside from the rappers up on up stage, was pretty monochrome.

- dubyadoubte

November 1, 2010 at 4:47pm

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"Like it or not, America remains a nation of true believers." No, it does not. It is, alas, a nation with a lot of True Believers, may of whom are making a great deal of noise right now. More people will vote Republican this year ("It's the economy, stupid") but it is not because significantly more people agree with the far right than did so in 2008 or 2000. This is an example of the fundamental error many people writing about politics have made in this election cycle; confusing volume of shouting with popular support. The right wing of the Republican party may have gone mad, but the nation as a whole has not.

- K_Wilson

November 1, 2010 at 5:38pm

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"dmillstone The Cat Stevens thing gave me pause too. I'd assumed he'd repented in some meaningful way. Was I wrong?" My guess is, and I'm going out on a limb here, that Stevens offered to come to the rally and neither Colbert nor Stewart had the guts to tell him no you can't, you don't fit in with our program. However this is exactly where Stewart's true grit should have been at its most tenacious. If your cause celebre is national sanity, you cannot pretend that Yusuf Islam is in any way commensurable with it.

- noga1

November 1, 2010 at 6:59pm

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Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam never said that death was an appropriate punishment for Rushdie. A journalist asked him what he thought about the fatwah on Rushdie in light of his then fairly recent conversion to Islam, and Stevens replied to the effect that he didn't yet know enough about Islam to give an answer. One could argue, as many have, that his failure immediately and resoundingly to condemn the fatwah was tantamount to his endorsing it, but his explanation, namely that he was caught off guard by the Rushdie question and didn't want to be boxed into becoming either a spokesman or a public critic for/of a religion he was only just then coming to know, strikes me as both plausible and forgiveable.

- AaronW

November 1, 2010 at 8:46pm

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I have an aesthetic (I guess) and perhaps theatrical criticisim of the rally or rallies. I thought Stewart's Sanity rally was a dull idea, but I thought that Colbert's original idea of a rally to "Keep Fear Alive" was a wonderful notion and could have led to something memorable. Therefore I was very disappointed when Colbert's idea was folded back into Stewart's and seems to have almost disappeared (I haven't looked at any clips yet except the final rap by JS, so I don't know what happened on the day). In any case, the original Colbert idea would have been a great riposte to Beck on his own grounds of emotional bullying and rhetorical overload. Unfortunately that chance was lost.

- ironyroad

November 1, 2010 at 10:01pm

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AaronW: "Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam never said that death was an appropriate punishment for Rushdie. A journalist asked him what he thought about the fatwah on Rushdie in light of his then fairly recent conversion to Islam, and Stevens replied to the effect that he didn't yet know enough about Islam to give an answer" " Robertson: You don't think that this man deserves to die? Y. Islam: Who, Salman Rushdie? Robertson: Yes. Y. Islam: Yes, yes. Robertson: And do you have a duty to be his executioner? Y. Islam: Uh, no, not necessarily, unless we were in an Islamic state and I was ordered by a judge or by the authority to carry out such an act - perhaps, yes. [Some minutes later, Robertson on the subject of a protest where an effigy of the author is to be burned] Robertson: Would you be part of that protest, Yusuf Islam, would you go to a demonstration where you knew that an effigy was going to be burned? Y. Islam: I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-wjxwpvqps

- noga1

November 1, 2010 at 10:18pm

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Who wouldn't reply "Uh, no, not necessarily" if asked whether or not you're ready to murder a particular author on the grounds that his book offends your newly discovered belief system? It shows proper caution, and the willingness to make sure you get your moral bearings right before you murder him.

- ironyroad

November 1, 2010 at 10:48pm

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Ok, I stand corrected. The version I presented was the version Islam describes now. You have convinced me that he was evil and crazy then and a liar now.

- AaronW

November 2, 2010 at 1:52am

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Update from NickCohen: http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/3554 "Salman has messaged me again and says, I spoke to Jon Stewart about Yusuf Islam's appearance. He said he was sorry it upset me, but really, it was plain that he was fine with it. Depressing. "Pathetic" is the word I would use. If members of the Tea Party said that American intellectuals who renounced Christiainity deserved to die for their apostasy would Stewart be fine with that too? Of course he wouldn't. His eyes would roll, his voice would thunder and that charming schoolboy smile would vanish from his face. He would never forget, until they repudiated. "

- noga1

November 2, 2010 at 2:46pm

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As a liberal, I'm appalled by Jon Stewart. He's so vacuous about Islam, the most illiberal religion in the world. And he's smug and shameless about it! Some poor wretch, an "adulteress", is about to be publicly stoned to death in Iran. This makes me sick.

- amidut

November 2, 2010 at 8:09pm

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You know, I was there at the Rally and even though it keeps getting reported that it was mostly "young and white", in the 3 areas we were standing, it most certainly was not mostly young. It WAS moreso female though which was surprising. And I guess the babies and toddlers with their parents might make the average age skew younger, there were a lot of 60 and 70-somethings there (the older, the more female). Our camcorder can prove this. Anyway, Jon Stewart may not be what "the Left" needs, but he is what the country needs and that is, more people who take the time to think, analyze, opine, ask and then once in a while, recognize they were wrong. I DO think he made a life/career changing step by giving "his keynote address" but in this mellow crowd and for this middle-age couple, the content happily affirmed that there may be hope for the polity if people really would tone it down, explore, think and act. Regarding that "Cat, Stevens", Yosuf Islam, some time after his initial remarks "back in the day" (recall that most people say stuff when younger or in the moment that they come to regret), he was presented with an opportunity to clarify. And he stressed that there were a few more things; 1) he was speaking specifically about a written duty as a Muslim when faced with something deemed as blasphemy (ie, it's punishable by death), 2) he was exercising "dry" British humour which in retrospect was not appropriate and 3) If a court of law (not Sharia court) found him innocent, then he would go by that. Boy he still sounds good BTW! Finally, a lot of the signs were tongue in cheek, as you would expect from some from some of the college students and recent grads (those cynical, world weary, ironic Gen Xers and Yers). Some were hysterical. Some were mystifying. I'm glad they were there and I filmed a lot of them.

- ericad

November 3, 2010 at 7:14am

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"he was exercising "dry" British humour which in retrospect was not appropriate" "In 1989, during the heat and height of the Satanic Verses controversy, I was silly enough to accept appearing on a program called 'Hypotheticals' which posed imaginary scenarios by a well-versed (what if…?) barrister, Geoffrey Robertson QC. I foolishly made light of certain provocative questions. When asked what I’d do if Salman Rushdie entered a restaurant in which I was eating, I said, “I would probably call up Ayatollah Khomeini”; and, rather than go to a demonstration to burn an effigy of the author, I jokingly said I would have preferred that it'd be the “real thing”. Criticize me for my bad taste, in hindsight, I agree. But these comments were part of a well-known British national trait; a touch of dry humor on my part. Just watch British comedy programs like "Have I Got News For You" or “Extras”, they are full of occasionally grotesque and sardonic jokes if you want them! " By attributing these statements to "bad taste" Yusuf is being quite lenient on himself, a leniency that he does not quite extend to Rushdie's Islamic "crimes": "I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie; nor backed the Fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini--and still don’t. The book itself destroyed the harmony between peoples and created an unnecessary international crisis." (wiki) He didn't call and he didn't back, he did not reject or did not work to rescind; quite the contrary, he goes on to explain the "crime" of that book; not just against Islam but also against universal humanity, what do you know. Why do people feel the need to mitigate for this person I cannot imagine.

- noga1

November 3, 2010 at 10:00am

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