from cbsnews.com
A few weekends ago, Joe and I were part of the insanity to descend upon the Mall during the
Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. I really can't think of any other cause or idea that I would ever bother dealing with such a crowd, so I'm glad this one came up. Though we never got to see the stage, we still had a fun time walking around with family and seeing all the costumes and signs.
-Metro set a new record for Saturday riders with 825,000+
-Crowd estimate at the Mall around 215,000
You can't really tell, but this is the line at West Falls Church metro...wrapping around the parking lot. We drove.
One side: "More Long Island Iced Tea Parties" The other side: "Obama: Bring back Arrested Development!"
Yeah.
Starting about 8 blocks from the stage, this is all we could see.
The boys were troopers!
We were here!
This was funny 'cause, like, Joe works in Financial Aid for one of the most expensive universities in the country.
People just set up camp in the sculpture garden.
Joe's new fave lunch truck!
Snakes ARE scary.
Some excerpts from Jon Stewart's
speech:
...This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times...
...The country’s 24 hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder...
..If we amplify everything we hear nothing...
...I feel good—strangely, calmly good. Because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false...
...We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is—on the brink of catastrophe—torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day...
...Where we live our values and principles form the foundations that sustains us while we get things done, not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done. Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, liberals or conservatives. Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do—often something that they do not want to do—but they do it--impossible things every day that are only made possible by the little reasonable compromises that we all make...
