Yesterday was Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, and while somewhat entertaining to watch on TV, I didn’t really find it that noteworthy until the last fifteen minutes. That was when Jon Stewart gave the speech linked below, filled with a fairly cogent set of observations about how important it is to get past the so-called “divisions” in society today. Sadly it was a comedian delivering this message rather than someone in a position of power, but hopefully others may notice between 100,000 and 300,000 people (the semi-official estimate: 215,000) cheering on the National Mall and see fit to take up similarly reasonable messages.
It takes until the 2:49 mark to get through the “thanks for coming” and “thanks to everyone who set this up” bits, but after that he says some fairly eloquent things.
On a much less serious note, Father Guido Sarducci gave a pretty amusing benediction to open the rally: