When the idea first surfaced, heaven only knows its origins, for Stephen Colbert to lead a rally in Washington to “Restore Truthiness” I was intrigued. The idea had a certain Abbie Hoffmanesque flair to it. As I saw it, such a rally in favor of a concept that is almost impossible to define seemed like the perfect counterpoint to the Beck rally in favor of (or against, as the case may be) the voices in the heads of Glenn and his followers. Were a rally for Truthiness, led by the faux Glenn Beck, attended by people whose sole purpose was to mock Beck and his minions-were that rally to outdraw Beck, and I think that it could, it would send a message on a number of levels, particularly to the media which has given so much attention to a group of people who are, by and large, sheep being led to the slaughter.
Unfortunately, John Stewart has chosen to ruin a perfectly good idea, by getting himself involved. What would have worked as satire may not work as serious stuff. We now have a too earnest Stewart announcing a “Million Moderate March” a/k/a March to Restore Sanity, to be answered by a Colbert counter-rally to “restore fear”, which itself hits the wrong note-“Restoring Truthiness” was a far better idea. In addition, we have Stewart at his worst, positing a false equivalency between the left and the right:
The purpose, he said, is to present an alternative to what he called a minority of 15 percent or 20 percent of the Americans who have dominated the national political discussion with extreme rhetoric. Mr. Stewart tarred both parties with that charge, citing the attacks on the right accusing President Obama of being everything from a socialist to un-American and on the left accusing former President George W. Bush of being a war criminal.
He made the same claim about both extremes dominating the national discourse on his show. The current situation would be improved if that were true, but it’s not, and producing a few pictures of left wingers carrying signs doesn’t make it true. There are whackos on the left, that can’t be denied. But they are not given aid and comfort by the Democratic Party, which is far too busy distancing itself from its normal rank and file to even think about embracing a few extremists. Even when the left turns out hundreds of thousands of perfectly normal people to protest a (yes, it was) criminal war, we are ignored. We dominate nothing, and Stewart has to know that. The Republican Party, on the other hand, has encouraged and embraced the wild eyed rhetoric that gets its followers aroused. The media has given out of proportion coverage to even sparsely attended tea party gatherings, while pretty much ignoring the people who are funding this “movement” from the shadows. There is no right winger so extreme that he or she will not be given a respectful hearing by our punditocracy. Right wing ideas that have been proven wrong over and over ( e.g. tax cuts cure all social ills) are treated with respect. Right wing lies (e.g., social security on the verge of financial collapse) are passed on as gospel.
There’s nothing new about any of this. The effort to delegitimize Obama, for example, is just a racially charged re-enactment of what they did to Clinton.
Sometimes it gets a bit out of hand, as Lisa Murkowski and Karl Rove have just learned in different ways, but the Republicans have not distanced themselves from the extreme, they have embraced it at every opportunity. They consider Murkowski and Bennett to be victims of friendly fire, regrettable, but expendable, casualties.
Speaking of delegitimizing presidents, was there any concerted movement on the visible left to delegitimize Bush? Recall, that he was illegitimate, given that his cronies on the Supreme Court stole the election for him. Few people were even aware that there was a sizable demonstration at his inauguration protesting his selection, because the media chose to ignore it. In the mainstream, including the entire Beltway Democratic party, it was considered impolite to mention that he had lost the election. Far easier to make Al Gore into a clown, which is what they proceeded to do.
Did any Democrat of national stature give aid and comfort to the few conspiracy theorists who felt that Bush knew in advance about 9-11? This is an example of left sided craziness that Stewart mentioned. Compare the number of prominent Democrats (zero, equal to the number of minutes the media spent talking about it) that took up that cause to the dozens of Republicans holding high office who have thrown raw meat to the birthers, with Newt Gingrich being but the latest example. Any Democrat that pandered to a paranoid fringe would pretty quickly be drummed out of the party, and if not, he or she would certainly not be given respectful hearings on television networks, even networks with names that don’t begin with “F”. Our very few paranoids are not in the discourse, their quite numerous paranoids have their own television shows and are quite definitely part of the discourse. Do any Democrats dance to the allegedly far left, unhinged Rachel Maddow (yes, I know she’s nothing if not reasonable, but we must be even handed, mustn’t we) the way the Republicans march to the beat of Limbaugh’s drum?
There is simply nothing equivalent on the left to what the right has been doing, and it is intellectually dishonest for Stewart to say that there is.
Over the course of the last 40 years the “left”, to the extent it can be called that, has busied itself trying to preserve the institutions created by the New Deal, not to mention taking on the burden of preserving our constitutional rights against a hostile judiciary, as opposed to a right wing that insists on adherence to the Constitution at all times, except when it happens to advantage blacks, liberals, Muslims, or any other group not composed of angry white people and their corporate puppeteers. Much of what we are advocating was considered mainstream in the pre-Reagan era. In any rational society, the left in this country would be considered “conservative”, since we fit the dictionary definition of that term, but this is not a rational society, and it is the right that has got us there. There are, in fact, no more “conservatives” in our national life, they have been replaced by reactionaries.
One more thing. Lets not forget that, while Obama is definitely not Hitler-like (if he were, the people saying so would be in concentration camps), Bush was a war criminal, by his own admission. Cheney was too, by his own admission. The lack of a conviction doesn’t change that fact. There is such a thing as truth, and speaking the truth, however uncomfortable that truth may be, should not be considered a sign of extremism.
So, unfortunately, I guess I won’t be going to DC, though when I first heard the idea for the Restore Truthiness rally, I started making plans. Despite all of the above, I might still have considered going, because after all is said and done, since he’s doing it, it’s important that a lot of people go, if for no other reason than to deprive Glenn Beck of bragging rights. I won’t be going because I’ll be doing what Stewart will be preventing all those demonstrators from doing: working on the weekend before the election to restore sanity to our national discourse by doing what I can to prevent a right wing takeover.
