BWW tally: Who all is going to the Rally? - Page 3

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 10/31/10 at 6:26pm

Moderate? I believe you volunteer at a homeless shelter. That makes you a bleeding heard do-gooder far left socialist wingnut.

[Q]

Posted: 10/31/10 at 8:23pm

Iflit - I doubt you have to worry about Delaware, but I'm afraid Nevada might be a done deal.

[metaphorical]

Posted: 10/31/10 at 9:22pm

I attended, though I don’t really remember, all the big marches on Washington in the 1960s. My mother was still in her twenties for the first one, and she had somehow heard that the black church on 34th Avenue in Corona, one neighborhood away, was sending a bus. I sort of remember the Reverend Johnny Bell, but not the bus ride or the rally itself.

The Rally to Restore Sanity, on October 30th, was different from those forty years ago, but was in some ways surprisingly similar, I imagine. Social networks built both, though it wasn’t Facebook and iPad apps that put my mother together with the Rev. Bell and his bus, as they put iflit and me together with her friend from choir and our daughter’s ex-boyfriend’s girlfriend and her cousin. We would have taken the latter-day church bus, sponsored by the HuffPost, but for wanting to stay over Saturday night.

The fundamental differences between then and now showed themselves in other ways. In 1965, I’m pretty sure we mostly hung out, unable to hear the speeches through an underpowered audio system whose speakers were too far away. Yesterday, we sat politely on the mall lawn and watched the proceedings on large screens (“Where were you?” “Third pair of Jumbotrons back”) with speakers that could be heard everywhere. The Capitol appeared just behind our Jumbotron, partially blocked by the enormous speakers.

It was a lot like watching TV—in fact, it was watching TV. As befits our post-modern self-reflective age, the rally was filmed, televised, and broadcast—to the rally. Our experience was mediated, in other words, by the broadcast medium that was showing us—as well as the rest of the world—our experience. Thus does modern culture bootstrap itself into our collective consciousness, and it’s fitting that the rally was put together by arguably the most post-modern and self-reflective of all the stars in the media galaxy. There were a few clues that we were live at the rally; we heard some helicopters before Stewart referred to them onstage, for example.

It was also fitting that the rally was started with a set from the Mythbusters, who began by conducting some scientific measurements, largely having to do with timing a crowd wave as it cycled from one end of the mall to the other. (Needless to say, their entire set can be found online, e.g., at http://www.videosurf.com/video/mythbusters-at-the-rally-to-restore-sanity-entire-segment-on-the-ground-1236069551 .) One experiment involved starting the wave from both ends at once, from which iflit and I learned we were less than halfway back. We hadn’t known that and in fact everyone in our area faced sideways for it. We weren’t clear where the other end of the rally was. At one point, we heard a huge cheer behind us; a woman nearby speculated that it was the Park Service opening up more of the mall. Of course we can’t know how big the crowd was, but the various estimates I’ve seen, from 215,000 to 284,000, don’t, as far as I can tell, include the crowds sitting on the steps of the various national buildings that circle the mall, nor do they include the large number of people on some of the side streets, which were closed to traffic. So the actual crowd total might well have been even larger.

The only boring song was the one by Jeff Tweedy and Mavis Staples (and I resented the way she commandeered over the closing musical number, not least because several other people on stage, including at least two of the 4Troops had better voices. I thought their rendering of the national anthem to be about the best I’ve ever heard that song done; http://vodpod.com/watch/4797611-4troops-national-anthem-rally-to-restore-sanity-andor-fear , about 1:50 in.) Speaking of the music, the only truly sour note in the whole rally, for me, was the inclusion of someone who endorsed the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, an implicit endorsement, it felt, of a fealty to an irrational ideology of exactly the sort that I went there to oppose.

If there’s a rally like this a decade from now, social networking will dominate it far more than it did this one. In fact, the nearly complete failure of phone and data networks will make this one seem more like those of the 1960s than the 2020s. But where is it on the half-century timeline of ever-diminishing political optimism? After the crazy tea party rallies of 2008, is it crazy to hope we’re on the cusp of a turn toward sanity and reasonableness? Can social media draw the rational centrist 60 percent of the country out of their shells, into the polls, and into, finally, the center of the politcal debate? I doubt it. But for one afternoon, it felt like anything, even sanity in the polity, was possible.

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 10/31/10 at 9:23pm

I have my Xanax ready for Tuesday night.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 10:34am

Phyllis, I have a feeling they were might have been using homogeneous to infer "preaching to the choir", not necessarily color.

I figured since it was the Washington Post they were trying to make a point that it was no different than Beck's rally, with the size and the homogeneity.

Watching it on tv, I found it kind of dull, but figured it was more exciting in person, although my ears are still bleeding from whomever it was singing America The Beautiful at the beginning. They did not sound good.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 10:52am

So Fox's take was essentially that the whole thing was about legalizing pot?

[jasonf]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 10:55am

Do you mean the 4 Troops singing The Star Spangled Banner? Tony Bennet sang America the Beautiful at the end.

I watched it last night from my DVR - it wasn't NEARLY as good on TV as it was being there! I can see how those who weren't there could be underwhelmed.

If nothing else, being a part of a crowd that size full of people with similar beliefs was an incredible rush. That alone made the trip worth it.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 11:27am

I swear some foursome sang America the Beautiful at the beginning. Maybe it WAS The Star Spangled Banner. I just heard four notes going at once that were not in harmony with each other.

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 11:58am

It was the Spangled Banner that they sang. In person, it was beautiful and I didn't notice many pitch problems, not to say that there weren't any. Oddly enough, for someone who has had an uncomfortable relationship with that song on many levels, their rendition gave me chills and made me a little weepy.

I had more difficulty with the hip-hop guys. But then again, I am an old fart.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 12:09pm

I figured it probably sounded better in person. Sometimes live singing doesn't translate well being broadcast live. ETA - I found it online and it doesn't sound as bad as I thought it sounded yesterday. Perhaps it's a problem with my brain!

At any rate, it really sounds like it was a great experience for those who were there, and I think that's swell.
Updated On: 11/1/10 at 12:09 PM

[madbrian]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 12:50pm

Keith Olbermann took to Twitter to defend the extremists on the left. His response is juvenile, at best.
Olbermann

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 12:53pm

But - despite anyone's efforts to say otherwise - there ARE fundamental differences between right-wing and left-wing pundits. Both my deal in fear (although I still think the Right almost has the market on it) but the Right are consistently deficient in facts in a way the Left is not. Even calling Olbermann an extremist seems a little much to me.

[madbrian]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 1:03pm

I agree that extremist is a poor choice of words, though I'm comfortable with arrogant blowhard. There are those on the Left and the Right who are selective in their facts. They cherry-pick the facts that suit their point of view. I've given up watching Olbermann for several reasons, but I can't recall seeing a contrasting point of view presented on his show. I much prefer Maddow, who may share his point of view on most issues, but enjoys debate and welcomes guests with differing opinions (though she finds it hard to get them to come on her show).

[strummergirl]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 2:28pm

"I agree that extremist is a poor choice of words, though I'm comfortable with arrogant blowhard."

Agreed and his reputation from his ESPN days seems to show he has always been that way even before he specifically did politics. Also much prefer Maddow and yeah, I don't recall anybody from the other side on his show except maybe Pat Buchanan who is really in a parallel universe. Keith seems more emotionally high-strung (if I am watching him The Special Comment usually means I am changing the channel) which I can get behind only so often but I also think even though he probably shares the same fans as Stewart and Colbert, Keith has sort of been a bit jealous to envious of those two. Not the first Olbermann has come to blows with Stewart and managed to come up short.

[metaphorical]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 4:35pm

Obermann is quite partisan, and even Rachel Maddow often shades an argument in her favor, but there's a big difference between them and the fact-free zones of Beck-Limbaugh talk radio and Fox "News."

There's simply no debating people who just make **** up, either under the fig leaf of illegitimate authority (e.g., the bought-and-paid-for scientists who dispute the existence of man-made climate change) or out of whole cloth ("Obama is a Muslim," "Obama is not a citizen," "Eric Holder wants to take away my guns," "death panels," etc.)

And that was (just to briefly bring the discussion back to the subject line) the point of the rally, 200,000 people who for one afternoon spoke with one voice to say: "I can't talk with you, and we therefore cannot engage in a political process, if you continue to undermine the preconditions of rational discussion and debate. We can disagree on any number of specifics, even in profound, long-ranging ways, but you must not opt for unreason and illogic, for then we cannot even disagree."

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 4:55pm

^^^^^

What he said!

[jasonf]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 5:05pm

You're 100% right, metaphorical. The point of the rally wasn't political, but to try to get some rational discussions happening. How did we get to a point politically in this country where there's a party outright saying "No, we won't even discuss doing anything if it doesn't fall in line with what we want"? How can anything ever be accomplished without open discussion revolving around actual facts?

[metaphorical]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 5:37pm

And not even "what we want" but "Obama must not have a second term, even if it means voting against what we want," such as McCain on the stimulus (and on don't-ask-don't-tell, for that matter), Grassley on the individual health insurance mandate, and the many senators who voted for cap-and-trade in 1990 but opposed it in 2010.

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 5:55pm

You know, we ended up getting very lucky on the way to the Rally. The hotel we stayed at in Alexandria was the first stop on the Yellow line - which means we were able to get to the rally without a lot of trouble. (We left before 10, and got there by about 10:30-10:40 and there were no lines when we were there for rate cards) and got off at the Smithsonian exit after transferring to I think the Red or Orange line. I was so glad to have my friend who lives in Alexandria navigating us. We got dumped out just about in the middle, and were able to walk up to 4th street.

Going there, we got onto empty trains, and got seats in the back, so we were not jammed in as much as others. I have read that some folks could not even get to the rally because they closed some of the stations a bit because of crowding.

On the way, we got to talk to folks, and met people from just about everywhere - from Florida, Atlanta, North Carolina and Illinois - and that was just on our car.

When we left, we walked a bit and talked and looked at signs, and other than being really really tired (and dying when the Huntington Station escalator was broken, making us walk what felt like 150 stairs with all of our crap), were no worse for wear.

We did have a few drinks and a nice dinner after wards back in Alexandria, and talk about everything we saw. We figured it would be just about impossible to get a bite to eat in DC proper.

I was really glad I was there and got to share it with friends.

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 7:06pm

When we left, we walked a bit and talked and looked at signs, and other than being really really tired (and dying when the Huntington Station escalator was broken, making us walk what felt like 150 stairs with all of our crap), were no worse for wear.

The whole of the Earth would implode if every single escalator on the Metro system were in working order at the same time. True fact.

The Huffington Post link for rally signs has been updated. There's now almost 500. All spelled correctly, as far as I can tell.

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 7:19pm

It was the end of the afternoon, we had made it through very very crammed metro rides back to Alexandria, my rate card got deactivated by something, and I had to buy another, but I didn't care - we were just about done and back to the car, when we looked up and saw what seemed like stairs going forever...

After standing for about 6 hours straight, it just about did me in. I just kept saying "do 20 more, just 20 more" to get to the top. When done, we us some nice drinks as a reward.

If the worst thing I can complain about is the escalator not working, I think that all in all, DC did a fine job.

[jasonf]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 7:45pm

Both our trains were pretty damn packed -- we were sardines, but we made it. What pissed me off was coming back from the rally, we needed a yellow line train. First two trains that came were green line. A yellow finally came, but it was STUFFED. Like three people made it on. Then another green came.

Finally, a yellow that was pretty full but could take some more came. We got on -- and there was a woman who wasn't there with the rally who PUSHED her way onto the train and was BITCHING the whole time about how crowded it was. People who were waiting for twenty minutes behind us didn't get on because this woman shoved her way in -- and then had the nerve to complain that she was late for work. Kind of killed the mood of "brotherhood" after the rally!

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 11/1/10 at 8:24pm

Funny, we just had fun talking to people while we waiting. It was such an interesting cross-section of folks, that spending a little more time exchange ideas seemed to far outweigh the time waiting.

And since that woman was not part of the rally, I would not let her have that kind of power over my experience. But, that is just me.