Jon Stewart Plans 'Restoring Sanity' Rally to Counter Glenn Beck Event

Take it down a notch, folks. An odd theme for a mass rally, but that's what comedian Jon Stewart has in mind for a semi-serious event planned for Oct. 30 in Washington, apparently in answer to Glenn Beck's mega "Restoring Honor" rally on the National Mall last month. This one's not going to be any "tea party." The "Rally to Restore Sanity" almost sounds like an Un-Rally.

"We're looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat, who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard, and who believe that the only time it's appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on some is when that person is actually Hitler," Stewart says on his Daily Show website.

The date, Oct. 30, "has no significance whatsoever," Stewart says gleefully. "Ours is a rally 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) -- not so much the Silent Majority as the Busy Majority. If we had to sum up the political view of our participants in a single sentence . . . we couldn't. That's sort of the point."
(Hmm. Dude, is this actually going to happen?)

And lest anyone think it's just about answering Tea Party conservatives and the Beck-a-palooza last Aug. 28, Comedy Central's other wild and crazy news satirist, Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report, says he'll hold a competing rally the same day, called "The March to Keep Fear Alive" to combat "creeping reasonableness." Stewart's people "want to replace our fear with reason," Colbert wrote. "But never forget 'reason,' is just one letter away form 'treason.'"

Stewart is due in Washington the week of Oct. 25 to do the Daily Show and he insisted that he has already done the paperwork to reserve a spot on the National Mall.

Conservative Fox TV personality Beck's event drew tens of thousands to the Mall on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech in the same location. Beck's Mall show was countered by a smaller civil rights march, led by the Rev. Al Sharpton.

"Think of our event as Woodstock, but with the nudity and drugs replaced by respectful disagreement. The Million Man March, only a lot smaller," Stewart said. ". . . Join us in the shadow of the Washington Monument. And bring your indoor voice. Or don't, if you'd rather stay home, go to work or drive hour kids to soccer practice. Actually, please come anyway."

Oh, and one more thing about those Hitler mustaches sometimes seen on placards at Tea Party rallies. They're okay on "Charlie Chaplin in certain roles," he said.