Rally to Restore Sanity turns crossfire on media

The Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally draws 250,000 -- according to Comedy Central -- or just a few thousand, according to Faux.

"God Hates Rallies," declared one missive. "God Hates Snuggies," went another. Still a third: "I am pretty sure God Hates Us All Equally." There was a yellow Gadsden flag - the ubiquitous Tea Party emblem - but instead of "Don't Tread on Me," it read, "OMG, Snakes!"

Among the most devastating sections of the rally were a series of "fear montages" Colbert played during a mock-debate with Stewart, showing the role of cable news in particular in whipping up the state of alarm and antagonism that the rally was reacting against.

Again, the major target here was the media, or "the politico-pundit perpetual panic conflictinator," which, Stewart said, instead of using its magnifying glass to bring problems into focus, was using it "to set ants on fire."

Gabriel Snyder, formerly of Newsweek and Gawker, said on Twitter, “the Rally to Restore Sanity turns out to be history’s largest act of press criticism.”

And well-deserved, I must say.

Update: our bud Jon Ponder reports that the rally was 2.5 times larger than Glenn Beck’s ‘Sermon on the Mall’ in August.