To Care or Not to Care: That is the Question

Originally published at OurLastStand.com on Friday, October 29, 2010

Is anyone but me amused by the fact that “The Rally to Restore Sanity” is being held on Halloween weekend and “The March to Keep Fear Alive” is the opening act for Mischief Night celebrations—in our political capital, no less?


The irony of timing may be the funniest aspect of this weekend’s clash of pop culture and politics, and even that falls flat after a few laughs. After all, as any politico will tell you, an election is the kind of serious business that brings out Americans’ fear, anger, and rage likened to that of the mythical Arab Street each time an Israeli dares to breathe in the wrong direction. Listening to the conversation on MSNBC’s Morning Joe one can’t help but feel that voting booths are really incense-scented offices lined with leather couches bordered by tissue-laden end tables.


Thank God, then, for the punditry of Jon Stewart and Colbert. Without their spitball satire steering the U.S.S. Apathetic, how would we ever be able to navigate the dark, stormy seas of political emotion?


To be sure, more than one news outlet has commented on the vague blur between politics and humor that has officially been deigned “a rally for the people who’ve been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs) — not so much the Silent Majority as the Busy Majority.” True to their postmodern ethic, the folks behind the rally imply their inability to draw on even their own desired demographic: Our audience would come, but they’re just too busy with real life to care. As glib as it may seem, it is more than self-effacing humor; the Rally’s permit application filed in September estimated a crowd of a mere 25,000, despite the 220,000 positive RSVP’s they received up to that point on Facebook.


So, the real question is: Why bother holding a rally if you don’t even think anyone would show up?


The entire event reminds me of a pseudo-prank a friend and I pulled in college. One afternoon we sat in the middle of the Student Center, handing out fliers, encouraging people to protest the fact that we had nothing to protest. About three people stopped to give a chuckle, while most just moved on without even taking notice. What started out as a joke quickly became my own personal reality check; it was as if I put my finger on the pulse of my generation and found myself pressing really, really hard to feel any sign of life.


The summer after that semester my friend and I joined a group of college classmates for a trip to the set of The Daily Show to see our icon, Jon Stewart. Here was a man who, in less than two years, took a fledgling parody program and quickly molded it into a serious attempt at comedic news. Ratings were soaring, especially on college campuses filled with jaded students who thought Stewart, with his sharp wit and “it’s all B.S.” attitude was the real straight-shooter in the news world. This was our chance to sit practically face-to-face with the man who held the world by the cajones. This was big.


After we filed into our seats we were told by some studio lackey that Stewart would take our questions before the show began. Anxious to impress, I formulated a question in my head regarding Arafat, Sharon, and the effects of the then-fresh new Intifada on the peace process. I had one shot to show this guy I was as informed as him, and I was going to do it right. And I did.


“I—make—the—jokes?” Stewart replied with mock-nervousness.


The audience laughed, Stewart proceeded to mock one of my friends for having a strange expression on his face, and then he took another question that was more on the level of what movies he liked to watch on Saturday night than anything related to the growing political nature of the show.


Right then is when I fell out of love with Jon Stewart. It wasn’t because he turned my serious question into an opportunity to garner laughs for himself; he’s a comedian. If people don’t laugh, he doesn’t get paid. It was because he purposely avoided answering a political question off-camera while simultaneously being as political as possible when he was on air.


Later, Stewart would go on to appear on several news shows on the Big Three and cable news—he even felt political enough to openly criticize the banter on CNN’s Crossfire (maybe because the cameras were rolling). But I knew it was all an act, political or not. I’d seen behind the green curtain; the wizard was there to do nothing more than promote himself. As a result, subjects like terror in the Middle East could easily become fodder for humor before the show, but as soon as the cameras were rolling, he could be as serious as necessary about the horrors of 9-11. Jon Stewart doesn’t play to a political agenda, he plays to a crowd.


And, apparently, his managers aren’t so sure the crowd even really gives a damn. Stewart and Colbert initiated this rally to “combat” the popularity of Glenn Beck’s 8-28. Yet, no Internet hack-news agency paid for buses to take Beck and his followers to the 8-28 Rally, nor did Fox News issue a memo to all its employees to go support Beck’s event. Perhaps that’s because what Stewart is pushing isn’t about the bigger picture. This is not the rally that’s going to ask America what they can do for their country; it is the rally that’s going to ask America to take a break. The real problem is that viewers and fans have already been broken by people like Stewart who are willing to sell out principles to parody and use policy to inflate their own persona.

Perhaps that is why the managers of the Rally are anticipating that no one will care enough to show up.

Afterward our Protest to Protest the Fact that We Have Nothing to Protest, I wrote an article for the student arts & entertainment magazine called Passionate Apathy in which I begged the student body to find something—anything to care about. Even then I could see we were a cause-less generation. Today, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Arianna Huffington was blaming the President for not doing more to organize the nation and motivate Americans to work together. I laughed.

Isn’t she one of the people spending a lot of money on a rally telling Americans not to give a damn?

The World's Oldest Profession

Pardon me while I dump the vomit out of my yarmulke.

I didn't need Rick Sanchez to throw accusations of a Jewish-controlled media in my face to make me realize that some people still think we own the world.  All I needed was to sit in the backseat of a beat up Ford (oh, the irony ) and get eyed up through the rear-view mirror by a lanky, brainless grad student and his Turkish gal-pal.

"Why are there so many of you in the media?"  His beady eyes betrayed him; his girlfriend already told him the answer, he was just testing me.  WASPs can be so sneaky sometimes.

"What?"  You see, not knowing I was a twin--let alone multiples in any amount--I was grammatically confused and decided to play it from that angle.  Jews can be so gracious sometimes.

"Why are there so many Jews in the media?"  This time he asked point-blank.

Silly me, I answered like a reasonable, educated individual, explaining why this was a popular assumption based on a period of time when us "Joos" weren't allowed to be doctors, lawyers, or any number of other accredited "professionals" so we resorted to owning our own businesses--one of which happened to be, at first, movie theaters and then, movie studios.  But, since that era is long gone, there is a virtual panoply of ethnicities, genders, sexual-orientations, and creeds (we're talking "United Colors of Benetton" here) "in the media". 

The Turkish exchange student gave her protoge a sideways glance that said, "Told you she'd say that."

The two shared a knowing grin.

And I left the car.

The first thing I did when I got in the door was call the President of my campus chapter of Hillel.  I told him the whole story.  His grand response was a half-hearted,  "Yeah, well, that's a shame, isn't it?"

Then I got the lowdown on the annual Kosher Chili Cookoff.

Today, Entertainment Weekly asked, "So, should Jon Stewart accept Rick Sanchez's apology?" after detailing Stewart's on-screen response in which he mocked Sanchez but, quite honestly, couldn't really give a damn about his accusations.

Sanchez's official statement is as pathetic as any other media persona's "official statement" about their verbal faux pas.  Reading that was like listening to a nine-year old forced to say they're sorry to the kid they tortured on the playground so their guidance counselor can close the case file and get home for dinner.  Say what you will about Mel Gibson, at least he actually apologized to "the Jewish community" and not just "anyone else" he "might have offended."

Jon Stewart's response is equally as pathetic.  He's the kid on the playground who got punched, and he's willing to play nice in front of the guidance counselor as much as he has to, in the hopes that the bully won't follow him home and try to beat him up again.  Only, this time, Sanchez was really disciplined--he got fired-- and Jon Stewart still played nice.

In the end, nothing was ever done about the two grad students who eyed me up in the backseat of their car.  Nor, in a related note, was anything done about the other grad student (this time a Pakistani from Dubai) who cornered me alone in the grad student lounge and confronted me with the now-disproven "evil actions of my bretheren in Jenin".  

And, in the end, Rick Sanchez's antiSemitic outburst will be lost in history's database of old information, something for our kids to find one day as they browse through the Wayback Machine. 

All the while, the stereotype lives on to surface another day.  Let's see; it was about two months between Oliver Stone and Rick Sanchez's matching accusations.  What'll be our Hanukkah present from Hollywood this year?

Wait a minute...I thought we were in charge?

Well, then again, I guess we are as long as we keep imitating Jonny and taking it like a man.