Comedians Keep Us Sane

Comedians don’t hold back. They’ll say anything. They know they can. Comedians tell it like it is. Politicians are laid bare, a difficult place to sit. We love it.

Funny woman Joy Behar reveals that Joe Biden once confessed to her, that he is far more afraid of going on Jon Stewart’s show than on Meet the Press. (from Marlo Thomas’s book Growing Up Laughing)

Jon Stewart hails this week from Washington DC, ending his week of taping The Daily Show, with a Rally to Restore Sanity. There were estimated to be more than 200,000 there. Wow!

Coupled with Stephen Colbert, the rally morphed into the Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear, as they bantered back and forth about said subject.

They offered a bus ride to DC, to a politically diverse group of people, and then made a parody of the fact that they could discuss their political differences without shouting.

The rally opened with a benediction from Father Guido Sarducci in a black and white zebra striped suit, offering such reasonable statements as “Muslums and Jews both don’t eat pork. Let’s build on that.” Sam Waterson recited Stephen Colbert’s goofy fear poem. The former Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf, sang his old classic “Peace Train”, only to be interrupted by Ozzy Osbourne’s discordant strains of “music”. Back and forth they went interrupting each other, eventually leaving the stage arm in arm.

Sanity awards were given out, one to the Venezuelan baseball player who graciously accepted an umpire’s call, that otherwise would have put him in baseball historical fame for pitching a no-hitter.

Fear awards were given out, one to the major television networks who wouldn’t come and cover the rally.

Jon’s keynote speech morphed into a debate between Jon’s sanity talk vs. Stephen’s fear mongering with such statements as “Reason is how mankind has advanced” vs. “If Eve had had a reality fear of snakes, I could go naked everywhere now”. Jon introduced a new thing to fear “corpomyte”, something he borrowed from Star Trek. R2D2 made an appearance as a representative of a sane, not-scary, robot. “There’s a blender who has its eye on you backstage”.

Jon gave a sincere thank you to all at the end, reminding us that we work together all the time to get things done. “People do impossible things together everyday through little reasonable compromises.”

Comedy for Political Sanity. I like it.