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UPDATED: Jon Stewart And Stephen Colbert Entertain At Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear

Alexandra Tilsley |
October 30, 2010 | 10:15 a.m. PDT

Senior News Editor

Political commentators figured the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear would be yet another attempt to get young voters to the polls - but instead, it was an afternoon of songs, jokes, and ridiculous red, white and blue outfits.

Comedian Jon Stewart took the stage in front of tens of thousands gathered on the National Mall and entertained the audience in his typical satirical style. He began by trying to count the number of people in the audience, which drew chuckles from the crowd.

Stephen Colbert, who's responsible for the "fear" portion of the rally, came up from under the stage, where he told the audience he was hiding in an underground bunker, dressed in a red, white and blue cape. Colbert, true to character, insisted that the rally was about fear.

Colbert told the crowd, "If you're hear to restore sanity, I want you to whisper: 'I'm concerned with the direction of the country, but I'm open to hearing a variety of ideas."

Stewart handed out Medals of Reasonableness - the first went to Armando Gallaraga, the pitcher who would have had a perfect game if umpire Jim Joyce hadn't blown the call. Gallaraga was given the Sanity Award for accepting the umpire's apology.

Colbert, meanwhile, introduced the Stephen Colbert Fear Award, the first of which went to the news organizations who barred employees from attending the rally.

"If their employees attend Jon's rally, someone might think NPR is liberal," Colbert said.

Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg also earned a Fear Award, because he created a tool, "For non-paranoid people to realize their greatest fear: that your ex is now dating someone much cuter than you."

Stewart and Colbert also sang a song, "There's No One More Than We," while wearing matching American flag pullovers. 

The most serious part of the event was the keynote address, during which Stewart said, "Reason is how mankind advances."

Colbert, still in character, tried to drum up fear, to which Stewart responded, "Keeping people scared is exactly what they want."

Stewart then made up a disease and Colbert acted afraid of it, prompting Stewart to point out, "You got scared by something that is not real."

"Maybe so, but not all the things that I or my fellow Americans are afraid of are made up," Colbert said.

In one of the first politically-charged exchanges of the event, Stewart then used the example of people who are afraid of Muslims.

"There are plenty of Muslim people who are not bad and who you would like," Stewart told Colbert. 

Colbert, who said, "your reasonableness is poisoning my fear," the introduced a reel of news clips, deeming the media "Fearzilla."



 

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Watch USC Annenberg Media's live State of the Union recap and analysis here.

 
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