If this is a rally in jest, why are so many people so serious about it?
Comedy Central comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are staging their Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear on the National Mall in Washington beginning at noon Saturday.
It started seemingly in fun, as a satirical poke at Fox News pundit Glenn Beck, whose Restoring Honor rally near the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28 drew from 87,000 to 1,600,000 people, depending on how wacked-out your estimate was.
But many locals who plan to go to Washington Saturday - in carpools, chartered buses, packed trains - aren't laughing. Asked why they're going, they're dead serious.
"Because the political scene has become truly insane," Karen Kaplan of Ambler wrote in an e-mail.
Allan Lundy, 63, a research consultant in Wyncote, said, "The political discourse has been so nasty and negative that there has to be a countervailing current that's more moderate and more reasonable."
When did this rally cross over from clowning to protest? Can you have a joke if for thousands it's no laughing matter? Will real protests break out at a faux event?
The actual content of the rally had been secret, but the Washington Post reported Thursday on its website that musical guests would include the Roots, Sheryl Crow, and Jeff Tweedy and Mavis Staples.
Megabus, BoltBus, and Chinatown bus rides to Washington are sold out. Across the region - and well beyond - groups are organizing transportation.
Joanne Sonn belongs to the Wayne Coffee Party (as in the non-tea party?), which has chartered a bus, complete with "coffee and mimosas," from King of Prussia. Emma Ellman-Golan, president of the University of Pennsylvania Democrats, said her group's bus sold out about a week ago, "and there are four or five more buses chartered by a couple of the dorms."
Comedy Central, the TV channel that is the home of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, has chartered fleets of buses. As of Thursday, DCrally bus.com, set up by the channel, listed 221 reservations on buses leaving 30th Street Station at 6:30 a.m. Saturday, and an additional 176 spots on buses departing the IMAX theater at the King of Prussia mall. (But are there mimosas?)
