The Stewart-Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was remarkable. Not only did hundreds of thousands of people (including me) come to Washington to see the rally, but I had the opportunity to share my perspective on Stewart, Colbert, and the conflation of news, politics, and comedy with several national media outlets.
Washington Post Reporter Paul Farhi and I talked at length for his (unfortunately titled) piece “Just who does Jon Stewart think he is?” A few days later, I did a live, hour-long chat with the Post. Readers sent in a bunch of excellent questions – more than I had time to field.
Meanwhile, I talked with USA Today’s Gary Levin for his piece “Can Jon Stewart’s ‘Sanity’ rally actually shape political debate?” At the Christian Science Monitor, reporter Gloria Goodale quoted me in her Vox News blog posts “Will the Beck and Colbert-Stewart rallies rock-the vote?” and “Are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert going all serious on us?” Byron Tau at Politico found at least one thing I said useful for his (unfortunately negative) piece “Jon Stewart gets serious.” Funny enough, columnist Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post took great exception to my quote in his rebuttal to the Politico piece.
Finally, the morning of the rally I did a live interview with Warren Pierce on WJR radio, Detroit. I also did a debriefing with Ben Rubin for his piece “Participants and pundits debate impact of Stewart’s’ ‘Rally to Restore Sanity’” in the Forward.
So a lot of excitement around the rally. Now we can only hope the message of reasonableness in political discourse starts to get heard!
Geoffrey Baym is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at the 
Cronkite to Colbert: The Evolution of Broadcast News (Paradigm Publishers, 2009) traces a historical trajectory from the height of the network age and Walter Cronkite’s Evening News, to our current post-network era, when the late-night comedians now stand among the nation’s most important newscasters.