Stewart Turns ‘em Out, But Can’t Turn It Up

Ladies and gentlemen, the numbers are in and it’s official: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert outdid Glenn Beck nearly three times over.  According to CBS News, the only organization doing a systematic count, some 215,000 people armed with signs, costumes, and a whole lot of sanity showed up to the Comedy Central-sponsored rally on Saturday, as compared to only 87,000 for Beck in his August rally.

For the millions who tuned in to C-Span, news shows, or the live internet stream, the rally’s comedic appeals and musical performances were surely entertaining, perhaps even thought-provoking. But many of the die-hard fans who made the journey to the nation’s capital had no such luck.  Standing among the huddled masses, they couldn’t hear or see a thing.

Perhaps because they are inexperienced rally organizers, or perhaps because they were far too modest in projecting turnout, Comedy Central failed to set up jumbo-tron screens and speakers along the national mall.  The inadequate electronics surrounding the stage were visible and audible to only a small percentage of the crowd.  Flustered participants chanted “Louder, Louder!” and “Turn it up!” to no avail.  Without a view of the stage or a way to hear the speeches, many retreated to nearby bars and coffee shops instead. 

“I couldn’t see or hear anything,” said Ellen Roche, a 26-year-old DC resident who ended up watching the rally from a coffee shop.  ”It didn’t seem like it was very well planned.”  

Despite lacking access to the planned stage antics, participants found a worthy focus within the crowd itself.  Aside from its awesome size, the assembly was punctuated with costumes (thanks to the rally falling on Halloween weekend) and saturated with clever, sarcastic, and witty signs satirizing political sloganeering. For weeks, the Daily Show and Colbert Report encouraged people to prepare, photograph, and share their Sanity/Fear signs.  One man held high a yellow poster reading “My Arms Are Tired.”  Another said, “I’m mad as hell, but mostly in a passive aggressive way.”  Nearby, a colorful sign read “God Hates These Signs.” 

While the majority of the signs were playful, befitting the rally’s spirit, a significant minority were pointedly aimed at denouncing the Tea Party.  ”Don’t Tea On My Leg And Tell Me It’s Raining,’ read one.  Another, set by a trash can, advertised the receptacle as a place to recycle Tea Bags.  Parodying the seemingly endless comparisons of politicians to Hitler, one sign painted a somewhat less inflammatory mustache on Sarah Palin’s visage: That of Groucho Marx.

Ironically, a handful of people toted incendiary political signs, seemingly missing the rally’s message of moderation.  One woman dressed in a devil costume brought a poster depicting former Vice President Dick Cheney burning in Hell.  

While many of the people present were, strangely, the last to learn what happened on the rally’s central stage, they at least enjoyed taking part in an event intended to be equally entertaining and political.  To these parody activists and zealots of moderation, outshining Glenn Beck was itself a statement worth making.  But when it comes to the technical stuff, Comedy Central could learn a thing or two from Fox News.

-Niv Elis

Rally? What Rally?

Context is everything. 

Normally, tens of thousands of citizens gathering in the nation’s capital would be considered a victorious display of strength.  But in the wake of the recent Glenn Beck Rally and Tea Parties in Washington, the union-organized One Nation Working Together rally seemed woefully under-attended.  Intended to demonstrate that the American left is still alive and kicking, the rally instead landed with a muffled thud on the national mall.

Whereas Beck attracted throngs of people impassioned by fiery rhetoric, big names, and audacious theatricality, One Nation’s response seemed merely a blip.  The mall’s spacious lawns displayed their full greenery, having recovered from some serious Tea Party treading just weeks before.   DC residents confronted with activists en route to the Lincoln Memorial quizzically muttered, “Rally?  What Rally?” 

The unions’ inability to produce the hype or headlines already surrounding the forthcoming Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rallies uncomfortably belied the event.  Were the obvious comparison points absent, and had the organizers not been such powerful national groups, the thousands of assembled marchers would have been impressive.

“I’m not a very big proponent of ordinary marches like this, so I’m just gonna put that right out there,” says Nadine Bloch, who works for the Washington Peace Center.  Instead, Bloch believes in using creative forms of resistance, cultural work, and direct action.  Towering over her, a 12-foot paper mache “Goddess of Peace and Liberation” demonstrates her views.  Covered with slogans such as “Fund Jobs, Not War” and “Build Schools, Not Bombs,” the Goddess is the creation of a consortium of social justice movements called The Peace Table.  “Marches are important for bringing communities together, showing strength to each other, perhaps sending a message to the White House, if you get really lucky.  So we’re here just to add color and creative expression.”

Close by, dressed in a snazzy suit and smoking a pretzel cigar, Harold Gotbucks III of the Buffalo Billionaires flashes a winning smile.  “The Billionaires decided we need to come down here and counteract these proletarian working people, running around and causing trouble,” he explains.  “They should just shut up and stop complaining!”  The satirical character is in reality Eric Gallion, a part-time engineer who bussed down with his local unions (shunning his private jet).  Gallion believes that humor adds an additional dimension to political debate, a notion that, once again, will come to the fore in the Stewart/Colbert rally.  “I think it makes it more fun and at the same time more real to people.  It’s too easy to just kind of blank out the people with signs.”

As with all large political events, the One Nation rally attracted a variety of like-minded groups hoping to capitalize on the event.  Exemplifying the plethora of causes, four women strolled through the crowd covered in bumper stickers collected from the myriad organizers.  “We just went to everybody, just meeting everybody and hearing their causes.”  The women, who traveled 14-hours by bus from Georgia, came to support the International Longshoreman’s Association/Local 1414 union, whose office is across the way from their restaurant Mama T’s.

For all its good causes, the One Nation rally may have ultimately been counter-productive for the unions.  Given the context, they may have inadvertently proved that they are no longer the backbone of the left. 

-Niv Elis

Glenn Hearts Barack - A Love Story

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then Glenn Beck has a huge man-crush on a figure he regularly tears apart on his show: President Barack Obama.

In addition to “taking back” the civil rights movement, Beck also appears to be “taking back” Obama’s Change movement.  Take, for example, the images that Beck uses on his show (and on his merchandise) to promote his values:

They are religious, conservative variations of the Shepard Fairey-designed Obama logos used in the 2008 Presidential campaign.  Instead of Obama, they feature past presidents and the values Beck cites as the essential teaching of Jesus: Faith, Hope, and Charity.  The Obama icons, instead, promoted Change, Progress and Hope, the one value they share.

Some commentators have noticed a parallel between Beck’s current speeches and Obama’s campaign speeches.  In 2008, Obama told crowds that “One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.”  Beck, at his “Rally to Restore Honor,” said “One man can change the world…That man or woman is you. You make the difference.”

Both try to mobilize their audiences by appealing to the American ideal of individual participation as a means of improving society.  For example, which of these two quotes was Glenn Beck, and which was Barack Obama?  

We have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.  This is the price and the promise of citizenship.  This is the source of our confidence — the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

vs.  

We as individuals must be good so America can be great!  America is at a crossroads…Do we do what every great generation has done in America in times of trouble: look ahead, dream about what we are going to become, not what we are?  Look forward, look West, look to the heavens, look to God, and make your choice.

Hard to tell, right?  The first was Obama’s inauguration speech, the second was Beck at his Rally.

Obama notably invoked the image of Lincoln in his campaign, taking the same train ride from Illinois to Washington for his inauguration and being sworn in on Lincoln’s bible.  Beck, standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, went as far as to reread the Gettysburg Address, noting its continuing resonance.

But why in the world would Glenn Beck, the demagogue of the religious right, follow in the footsteps of Barack Obama?  The reason is that he is playing to an audience motivated by similar emotions as the electorate in 2008.  The Tea Party movement, despite vastly different politics, is really a mirror image of Obama’s Change movement. 

Obama was vaulted to power on the momentum of a populace disillusioned with a dysfunctional government, seeking change from the misadventurous George W. Bush administration that led to two wars and an economic crisis.  In the Tea Party, the political doppelganger of the Change movement, Beck sees the same features: idealistic activists who believe that the country is on the wrong track politically and desperately want things to change.  

All that Tea Party anger the media is so fond of citing is built on a desire for different politics, albeit from a conservative perspective, seeking to restore fonder, simpler times.  Guy Miconi, an Italian immigrant and Glenn Beck supporter from New Jersey longs for such a restoration to America’s glory days. “This was the Mecca. People wanted to come.  People spoke so highly of the United States.  Go to America, and you work hard, and you’ll earn anything you want to do.  But guess what, you can’t do that anymore.”

Even with a copycat political strategy, Beck will continue to use his unique brand of fear mongering, religion, and apocalyptic rhetoric to motivate his followers. Don’t be too surprised if his next book is called “The Hope of Audacity.”

-Niv Elis

Lights, Camera, Immigration Rally!

If all the world is a stage, then the White House is a really useful set piece.

That, at least, is how well-organized protesters with a coherent media strategy see it.  In their calculations, the best way to get their message delivered to the government is through television, radio, and written media.  When Casa de Maryland, a group devoted to the welfare of the Latino community, organized a rally on immigration (in coordination with dozens of other organizations), it needed to create powerful images dripping with symbolism to attract the media, and help them deliver their message.  As a result, every detail of the rally was coordinated to send an emotionally appealing and potent message.  For example, the rally was planned to coincide with dozens of other protests across the country on the day that Arizona’s controversial immigration law was slated to take effect (many of its main provisions were struck down by a federal court that morning).

Meghan McNamera, a volunteer with a great deal of experience organizing protests, offered her insight into how a well-planned rally can be an effective aspect of a policy campaign. 

“First of all, it gets media attention, which is really important.”  In what opponents would call an unabashed act of political theater and supporters would call a humanizing exposition of the realities of immigration law, the organizers brought together some 700 children of undocumented workers, born citizens in the United States, from all over the country.

Wearing T-shirts reading “Don’t Deport My Mom” or “Dad,” the kids chanted a variation of a Springsteen classic: “Born in the USA, don’t take my mommy and my daddy away!”  As the cameramen made their way through the crowd, the organizers set up front page-friendly poses behind banners emblazoned with pointed slogans.

“There are about 360,000-400,000 deportations every year, and what people don’t think about is the kids and the families that they leave behind when the Obama Administration deports people,” says McNamara.  “Families are separated all the time.”

Using the White House as a backdrop for the rally conveys that the issue at hand is of national importance and should be dealt with at the highest levels of government.  It also can help the message reach the intended targets.  “If you do it in key areas such as in front of the White House or if you have key speakers, you’re able to target specific members of congress that would see it.” 

Finally, it has a galvanizing effect.  Protest “gives a voice to the people and makes them less afraid to come out of the shadows, and that’s a really important part of the movement, you know, having people who are willing to speak their mind.” 

McNamera’s own experiences have shown her the human side of immigration.  “I’ve had friends who are undocumented.  I worked in the restaurant industry throughout college and I got to know them and see them as human beings rather than as illegal immigrants who need to be deported.”  Protest is important because to those who do not interact with the immigrant community, “it gives us a face.” 

Rodrigo Carreon, a dual citizen who has lived in Houston, Texas for 37 years (and is running for a position as a Judge in Fort Bend County) agrees.  He came to support his community and champion a less punitive immigration policy.  “We prefer more schools than more prisons,” he says. 

Behind the theatrics, the organizing groups have coherent political goals and specific policy recommendations.  They advocate for comprehensive reform that would secure borders, but also provide a pathway to the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country subject to background checks, fines, and taxes.  But in the information age, with its overabundance of flashing news headlines and sound bites, the President will most likely hear about a protest outside his residence if it is spectacular enough to create a story that the media, in any of its forms, cannot ignore.

Even those with serious policy recommendations, then, must put on their costumes, learn their lines, get on the stage, and perform for the cameras.

-Niv Elis