As Halloween is at least partially based around fear I feel that it is justified to talk about the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rally that happened this past Saturday. Whether it was through the threat of peanut butter covered bees, or the demonstration of media consistently using fear as a tool to shape societies views I believe that Colbert did a good job of satirizing fear as an overbearing issue for discourse in everyday life. Stewart and Colbert were successful in driving the point that too many debate, news, or political programs are hurting the important discussions and thus causing an abundance of dead ends on the important issues.
At the end of the rally Jon Stewart told the crowd, “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 we have nothing to fear. "They are, and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies, but unfortunately one of our main tools in delineating the two broke." He spoke of what he termed "the country's 24-hour politico pundit perpetual panic conflictinator." It did not cause the nation's problems, Stewart said, "but its existence makes solving them that much harder ... If we amplify everything, we hear nothing."
Overall, I believe that this rally looked at everyones problems with discourse, but mainly focused as a tool to critique the media. A subject very near and dear to this class...
Did you actually go to the rally? I really wanted to - I heard it was so funny. That's an interesting point, though: "if we amplify everything, we hear nothing." I feel like we haven't argued that enough in our class thus far.
ReplyDeleteI had a great time!
ReplyDeleteLooked like a great time. I'm sad i dint get to go. I think it is great that two comedians are using their social influence to host a movement for good.
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