Harvard Students Join In at Stewart and Colbert's Rally

Last weekend’s Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., generated a slew of media attention. Around 200,000 people, including this Flyby correspondent, gathered to hold ironic signs and, despite the turnout, managed not to cause a ruckus.

”Everyone was really calm,” said Anastasia N. Roda '12, who attended the rally.

The huge mass of people present made it almost impossible to hear or see anything without being directly in front of the stage, but that did not dampen the event’s carnival atmosphere.

A large number of people wore costumes, including a robot with a sign that read “Toasters United Against Teabaggers.” There was even someone offering psychiatric help for five cents.

Those who attended the rally echoed estimates quoted in news reports that put the number of spectators in the hundreds of thousands.

“At one point, some of my friends picked me up. Looking down the mall, you couldn’t see the end of the crowd,” said Roda.

“We all came not knowing what to expect,” said Benjamin B. Wilcox '13. “We didn’t know if we were making a political statement or seeing a comedy show.”

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert went out of their way to play with this ambiguity, as most of the show consisted of jokes about current affairs and references to the rally. For example, Colbert estimated the crowd size at 6 billion just after emerging on the stage in a pod similar to the one used to rescue the Chilean miners—and in typical Colbert fashion, he was wearing a stars and stripes jumpsuit.