Well Gee

According to the media, now would be a good time to deflate the political rhetoric and calm the increasingly unstable political climate before, you know, more people are senselessly gunned down. Frankly, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert foresaw this before anyone of the bickering, persnickety media did.

Today, in the aftermath of Congresswoman Gifford's shooting, the NYtimes is now wondering if we should maybe attempt to not "conflate philosophical disagreement with some kind of political Armageddon." Good job, media. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have been pleading this for more than a year, with the urgency of their message culminating in the Rally to Restore Sanity/And or Fear, which took place in October.

"We live in hard times, but not end times", was the summation of their message. Basic civility must be reinforced, no matter the level of disagreement. How hard was that? And their powerful message went mostly unnoticed - I scanned major news sites after returning from the rally, and the summaries in the NYtimes and online blogs seemed more preoccupied with how many people had attended vs. the attendance number at Glenn Beck's rally, or dismissively patronized it as a political Woodstock event, reefer included. Even the liberal pundits seemed so terrified of affiliating themselves with this comedic duo, that their coverage on the event was minimal at best. Truly, the tone of every article on the rally - sans Huffington Post, since Ariana is like StewartColbertfan #1 - was implicitly condescending. Probably the fact that Jon Stewart's keynote speech so adroitly attacked the media, or the "24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator", as he called it, didn't sit too well with them. Stewart's ernest words were too sane and reasonable to be a proper reality check. Until now.

What a complete media fail.