Rally to Restore Sanity

October 30, 2010: October 30, 2010: Comedy Central's response to Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the teabaggers was underplanned and overwhelmed. We arrived before 11 a.m. and bailed out about 1:30 p.m. We took the METRO to the rally, but ended up walking the 2-1/2 miles home.

The rally had jumbotrons and speakers for only the two blocks of the Mall from 4th to 7th Street [there is no 5th Street on the Mall; the L'Enfant grid pattern includes short blocks on long blocks to accommodate the diagonal avenues] but the crowd stretched beyond 7th street to 10th Street without video or sound. This is in marked contrast to other Mall events in which jumbotrons and sound have extended from 3rd to 14th streets. To add insult to injury, Comedy Central placed the support vehicles along 7th Street further blocking view and sound even into the next block where we found a spot at 11 a.m.

It required a telephoto lens to see Oprah, Stewart and Colbert:

We liked the signs but only some of the costumes:











































Cell phone users had trouble getting a connection as the services were overloaded. This obnoxious woman (l) spent most of the time trying to reconnect with somebody; the line for the womens' room in the nearby Hirschhorn:












METRO stubbornly stuck to its Saturday schedule, which underserves riders on any given Saturday without a national rally on the Mall. This rally created the record to date for METRO ridership on a Saturday and would have been even greater if METRO had added trains. Instead, there were mobs at METRO stations, police closed some stations, trains were overcrowded and many ended up walking, including us.
The out of towners tended to overlook the logistical problems. For them, it was all about the journey, the cameraderie and the statement. But we locals were unimpressed. We expect METRO to operate poorly but really the US Park Service failed miserably.