The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

By Mayze T.

On Saturday morning, I woke up at 6:13. I got dressed, packed my backpack, and ran out the door. My mom was waiting for me in the car. We drove to Penn Station, a trip of about one hour, and boarded our train. When we sat down, we heard the passengers in front of us. “We want to prove that old people can be sane too!”one of them was saying. I whispered to my mom, “They’re going to the rally!” and she nodded. From then on, it was a three hour train ride before we finally arrived at our destination, Washington D.C. After leaving Union Station, we tried to find a taxi. We waited in line for about a half an hour, before finally getting a cab. I was dressed as Waldo and was getting some strange looks. One man even hopped out of his car to take a picture of me! We took the cab to our hotel, and on the way, we could see lines of people walking in costume, carrying signs. Once at the hotel, we checked our bags. Then we attempted to find a cab. There were no empty cabs. We walked around for a bit, but every cab was full.When we finally found a taxi, we embarked for the rally. Traffic was at a standstill, and on the streets coming up to the rally we saw tons of people in costume, carrying ridiculous signs. “Zombie party – we want politicians with BRAINS!” and “This is not a sign” were two of my favorites. I wasn’t the only Waldo either; we saw two or three other people in the same costume, along with Hogwarts students, Sarah Palin, giant bananas, and – the most fantastic one of all – the capsule that brought up the Chilean miners. When we left the cab, we walked up the street. There were some policemen out presumably to make sure that the rally didn’t get out of control. They too were enjoying the rally, laughing at the signs and costumes that people had. Even though we arrived a bit late, we managed to cut in through one of the side streets and found ourselves in the first quarter of the audience. Next to us was a group of people wearing the “Rally to Restore Sanity” logo shirts. John Legend played first. Unfortunately, we could not hear him, and we did not know that he was the one playing. Next up were the hosts of Mythbusters, who proceeded to stage what was, presumably, the largest “wave” ever done at a political rally. Finally –finally– Jon Stewart came on stage, followed by Stephen Colbert. Not that we could hear them, or see them. It didn’t matter, anyway. The point of this rally was not to listen to Stewart and Colbert, and the point of this rally was not to mock the rallies created with serious intent. The point of the rally was to bring together like-minded people; to bring together people who don’t want to blow tiny issues out of proportion; to bring together people who can talk about issues and think about them; and, most importantly, to bring together people of both parties, from all across the country, who just want a little sanity.


Here is Jon Stewart's wrap up of the rally, as shown on C-SPAN:

(video courtesy of youtube)