Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) and Ozzy Osbourne mock clash in rally staged by Jon Stewart
In response to a recent rally by ultra-right conservatives who hate Obama, and exactly three days before midterm elections in U.S., the popular host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, staged a rally yesterday in DC called "Rally To Restore Sanity."
Part comedy show, part music festival, the rally attracted an estimated 215,000 people around the National Mall, a festive congregation of the goofy and the politically disenchanted. The rally was a fun way to neutralize fear-mongering and divisive politics and media coverage. The screens showed a variety of pundits and politicians from the left and right, engaged in divisive rhetoric. The slogans heard at the rally included urging people to "relax," and "I wouldn't care if the president was Muslim."
Stewart's friend and host of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert, who poses as an ultraconservative on his show, played the personification of "fear" at the rally (left in picture above). He arrived on stage in a capsule like a rescued Chilean miner, from a supposed underground bunker. He pretended to distrust all Muslims until one of his heroes, basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who is Muslim, came on the stage. "Maybe I need to be more discerning," Colbert mused. He told Stewart: "Your reasonableness is poisoning my fear."
Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow had a joint musical performance (video below), singing if "I can't change the world to make it better, the least I can do is care." At one point, Stewart asked the famous British pop singer turned-mulism, Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) to perform his well known pro-peace inspirational song "Peace Train," while Colbert tried to counter that with heavy-metal rocker Ozzy Osborne (see video below and picture above) wearing a cross, who engaged in a battle of the bands with Islam, in a mock clash of music and cultures. Tony Bennett closed the show by singing "America the Beautiful."
The Daily Show is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning program that takes a reality-based look at news, trends, pop culture, current events, politics, sports and entertainment with an alternative point of view. Last week, President Obama made an historic appearance on the show and was grilled with tough and probing questions by Stewart. Jon Stewart has gained acclaim as an acerbic, satirical critic of personality-driven media shows in US media networks such as CNN and Fox News Channel. He is popular with Democrats and independents, a Pew Research Center poll found.
Stephen Colbert is the host of The Colbert Report, a spin-off from and counterpart to The Daily Show that comments on politics and the media in a similar way. The show satirizes conservative personality-driven political pundit programs, particularly in the right wing Fox News. The Colbert Report has been nominated for four Emmys each in 2006, 2007 and 2008.
