Rally to Restore Sanity

WASILLA — On paper, it doesn’t sound like anyone’s idea of a fun Saturday — show up at 8 a.m. to watch CSPAN on a projection screen in a middle school gym.

But instead of congressional hearings, CSPAN this weekend was broadcasting Comedy Central’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. And instead of dry policy debates, the network featured rock stars, celebrities, and the hosts of both of Comedy Central’s fake news programs, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

“This thing is like Woodstock without the mud,” said event organizer Blake Merrifield of the rally in Washington, D.C., and the 1,100 “satellite rallies” like the one at Wasilla Middle School going on worldwide.

Merrifield said that until six weeks ago he was a heavy-equipment operator. Most of his time spent unemployed has been devoted to putting this thing together, he said. And with 200 or more people in the crowd, Merrifield was a happy man.

Without mentioning her name, Merrifield said that in the national media Alaska in general and Wasilla in particular have been painted with a broad brush in the wake of Sarah Palin’s run for vice president.

“These past two election cycles, this community and our state as a whole have been pigeonholed,” he said. The rally, he said, was an attempt to show that Wasilla residents “are reasonable people. They want discussion. They want debates. They want to work together.”

To read the signs prepared for the occasion, it seemed most of the attendees were on the same page. There was little partisanship — though the Tea Party took a lump or two — and Palin was mentioned just once, in a somewhat nonsensical way.

“Palin lacks gravlax,” the sign read, likely referencing a Scandinavian appetizer and Republican strategist Karl Rove’s recent comments about Palin lacking gravitas.

Other signs included, “Happy Just Feels Better,” “You want to send angrier people to Congress to make things better!?” “No More Mudslinging — we all get dirty,” and, likely in reference to the movie “The Big Lebowski,” “Calmer Than You Are, Dude.”

For an emcee, the Wasilla event featured Steve Byrd, a retired Valley drama and English teacher.

“This is a perfect idea in my mind,” he said. “I think the most important message here is that this democracy needs to be participatory. We definitely need to vote but we also need to talk to each other.”

Byrd said that in his past life he always felt a need to avoid public displays of his political views. Nobody ever told him he should, it just felt like the right thing to do when he was in charge of educating young people.

“Now I feel like I can open up and support whatever I want,” Byrd said. This rally was one of his first steps in that direction.

Anchorage reggae band Bare Roots played before, after, and at certain points in the middle of the rally. Merrifield said they donated their time, showing up Friday evening to set up their equipment and returning in the morning.

“This is the earliest gig we’ve ever played,” vocalist Koka Gionson told the crowd.

As for the main event, Stewart and Colbert spent the bulk of their three hours mixing satire, musical interludes and celebrity appearances. Stewart gave out medals to people who had famously behaved in a reasonable manner. Colbert, who claimed to be there to keep fear alive, handed out medals to people who made the public fearful.

The audience in Wasilla played along, doing the wave right along with the crowd in D.C., standing up and sitting down at the presenters’ direction and applauding the same lines the crowd on the National Mall did.

Probably the only point of difference in crowd reaction came when Palin popped up in a video played to the D.C. audience saying “lamestream media” during a montage of very brief clips from news shows. Seeing their former governor got a rise from the crowd.

Stewart ended the show with about 12 minutes of earnest discussion. He told the crowd that the media didn’t create the problems the country faces but is doing its utmost to make them harder to solve by blowing little differences out of proportion.

“The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything, we get sicker,” Stewart said.

America can still come together to solve complex problems, he said. As an example he referenced highway traffic. Jerks are “rare and scorned.” And all it takes to send millions of cars back and forth is a simple series of compromises everyone makes almost instinctively.

“You go, then I go,” Stewart said.

Though that was the end of the rally, the event in Wasilla kept going with a live skit.

Playing a Tea Party activist, school board member Erick Cordero shouted “No more taxes,” before showing the crowd the sign he’d made, which contained a crucial spelling error, rendering his message, “No more Texas!”

He and two others then took turns shoving each other away from the mike and reading liberal or conservative messages, before Palmer bookstore owner David Cheezem read a speech he’d prepared in the style of Glenn Beck railing against public swimming pools.

There are public pools in Palmer and in Wasilla, Cheezem said.

“Do you know where there isn’t a public swimming pool? In the constitution!” he shouted. “These are brainwashing palaces of progressivism!”