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October 12, 2010

Stink of desperation attends Jon Stewart DC rally

Thomas Lifson
Viacom, owner of Comedy Central, is pulling out all the stops (and then some) to avoid an embarrassing turnout for Jon Stewart's announced rally in Washington, DC, squandering corporate funds in a desperate bid to stave off humiliation -- from Glenn Beck.  

John Nolte of Big Hollywood obtained a memorandum which seems to be intimidating employees into boarding free buses (apparently paid for by the company) in New York City, and undertaking an 11 hour round trip on their Saturday holiday, to puff up the numbers for Stewart's event.

An internal email reveals that MTV is investing heavily in making a success of Jon Stewart's counter-rally to Glenn Beck's incredibly successful August event. But the music network's tactics give the whole affair a taint similar to October 2nd's "One Nation" rally, where all that Big Labor-SEIU astro-turfing still wasn't able to reproduce Beck's grassroots success. Below is a portion of an email that I'm told just went out to some, and maybe all, MTV employees. The wording is chipper and upbeat enough, but the subtext is worthy of an SEIU thug: [emphasis mine -- and I've removed any links for fear they go to private internal servers]:  

Whether you lean left or right, hail from a blue state or red, prefer keeping sanity, fear, or a healthy dose of both alive and well, the one thing we all have in common is that we've pledged allegiance to the MTV Networks flag. And when an opportunity arises to support one (or two) of our own. we'll take it pretty much every time.

You may have heard that Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are hosting a little get together on the National Mall in Washington, DC on Saturday, October 30th. ... This will be a day when - no matter what transpires from Jon, Stephen, and their special guests - our brothers and sisters at Comedy Central will own the cultural conversation, without question. Who would want to miss that one?

On the morning of October 30th, we're loading up a fleet of buses here at 1515 Broadway and sending as many of you as we can down to DC for a free one-day, round-trip journey to join in the Rally to Restore Sanity and March to Keep Fear Alive. It's about a 5 ½ hour trip down 95 to our nation's capital[.] 

Nolte points out the obvious implication that those who don't kill their weekend with this rally are disloyal employees. Sounds a little like the North Koreans exhorting people to come to rallies celebrating the dear leader.

When Stewart announced his rally, intended to mock Glenn Beck's event he evidently didn't think it through. Beck was able to draw hundreds of thousands because there is genuine grassroots enthusiasm for diverting America from its suicidal path under Obama and the liberals. But how many people are willing to devote a fall weekend day to mocking others?

Even with massive funding and support from labor unions, and a coalition of leftists groups so broad it even included the Communist Party of the United States, Ed Schultz embarrassed himself with a turnout that was a tiny fraction of Beck's. Stewart gets better ratings than Schultz (as left handed compliment if ever there were one), but as the epitome of detached cool, it is hard to see him inspiring passion the way Beck does.

The MTV bus op is matched by Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post, who announced that her organization would also charter buses to bring bodies to the rally, reportedly "shocking" the green eyeshades folks at her website with the unforeseen quarter million dollar expense.

I am happy that media lefties are blowing big bucks on complimentary transportation to this rally. Despite such squandering, attendance will come nowhere close to the Beck rally, whose attendees paid their own way.

The only question is which is more embarrassing: poor attendance at the rally, or desperate, expensive, bullying measures to round up bodies?

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