Yesterday's Rally to Restore Sanity was wonderful and awful. Wonderful because 200,000-plus people attended. Awful because 200,000-plus people attended.
The Metro came near its breaking point, food vendors were overwhelmed, there weren't enough screens and loudspeakers, and the lines for the Port-O-Potties stretched back to Rosslyn, Virginia. Clearly Jon Stewart and his "Daily Show" forces, as The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived would say, misunderestimated the crowd.
Still, even though we were in the largest sea of humanity since our last Democratic convention, we have to say that everyone there was sane — in fact, very nice. Their homemade signs were funny and inspiring. We left feeling great, that America — at least, the America that we feel a part of — is civil, intelligent, informed and clever.
Nobody was talking about bringing baseball bats to state capitals or "taking out" reporters. There was no stomping. There were just thousands and thousands and thousands of people who couldn't see or hear much of the show but who clearly agreed that violent rhetoric, punching or stepping on other folks' heads, misreading (or not reading) the Constitution and watching FOX "News" were, um, bad things.
A pity that Americans watching at home may have realized none of this. But that's a subject for another post. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: The Globe & Mail is quoting a National Parks police officer who said he thought 400,000 people had turned out for the rally. So let's just agree to say we were half a million strong, shall we? We cats PURR.
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