When looking at the two rallies
through the Burke frames, the obvious main frame is the satirical. Colbert’s side is
a March to Keep Fear Alive, an inherently absurd reason to rally in Washington,
and it’s main points – that now is not a time to be “rational” and “think,” it’s
a time to get mad! Don’t listen! Get angry! – play up the absurdity for all it’s
worth.
On the other side of things,
Stewart’s original rally is a call against the absurdity of the world, a cry of
anti-satire. It’s a rally for people who think that “shouting
is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat,” asking for
America to “take it down a notch” when it comes to the vitriolic hate-machine.
There’s an element of the burlesque to Colbert’s approach to his
rally – he himself is the fool, and that’s a bad thing. In the climax of the rally’s performance,
this is taken to an extreme, when “Fearzilla,” a grotesque monster made in
Colbert’s image, is destroyed from the cheers of the Rally to Restore Sanity. It’s a bizarre, surreal political cartoon
brought to life.
Finally, the “Moment of Sincerity” brings
in the tragic frame, and
retroactively tints the event with that frame.
Stewart addresses the crowd with his intentions – not to mock, not to
suggest that times aren’t tough, but to show that it’s not the end of the world;
the media just feeds off that feeling.
The world is flawed. We like to demonize
our opponents, and by doing so, we create our own echo chamber nightmare.
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