{show of farce}
to Washington, she is trying to do some- thing beyond “demonizing Republicans.” Then, one of the cameramen points
out that Huffington is standing per- fectly in line with a neon sign in the background. It reads “left field.” “It’s a left and right crowd,” she coun-
ters. “It’s fantastic that people wanted to get up on a Saturday morning in the cold to make an impact.”
h
Judging from the signs they’re carrying — “Buck Beck” and “Doughy White Guys are not an Oppressed Mi- nority” are a couple — 99 percent of the people being transported by Huffington are from left field, I decide as I wander up and down the aisle of bus No. 45937. The bus, which pulls away at 6:35 a.m., has lots of room to stow backpacks and signs, and comfortable velveteen seats, upon which many passengers have immedi- ately dozed off. It is stocked with free soft drinks and organic Oikos Greek Yogurt donated by sponsors. “Arianna is Greek, right?” someone jokes. Last time I was in Queens, I was cov-
ering the 2005 Greater New York Billy Graham Crusade about one-quarter mile to the south in Flushing Meadows-Coro- na Park. This crowd is the polar opposite of Graham’s devout Christian listeners. Many, I discover during conversations with those awake enough to talk to me, are agnostic or Jewish. It’s a universe far removed from the
one I customarily inhabit as a born-again Christian. I didn’t attend Beck’s rally, and I think its lineup of religious lead- ers has more to say about evangelicals’ desperation to latch onto someone with vision than it does about Beck’s leader- ship. While few of my friends are into conservative luminaries such as Beck or former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, they are likely to be regulars at the annual Jan. 22 march against abortion down Con- stitution Avenue. A lot of them tithe, put off sex until marriage and home-school their kids. Other than my parents — who are as liberal as I am conservative — no one I know stays up until 11 p.m. to watch Jon Stewart. You might say I’m the antithesis to Bill
Donahue, a Left Coast reporter from Or- egon whom the Post Magazine assigned
The students exit the Metro, then walk toward the rally (from left, Danil Rudoy, anna Rozenberg, Mike Dabrowski and sergey Varlashkin).
to follow a group of Tea Party support- ers to the Beck rally. The Magazine then asked me, a former Washington Times religion editor, to do the same with Stew- art’s young, liberal followers. I’m curious to learn: What do these folks want? Darned if I ever find out. What I
have ended up on is a Magical Mystery Tour of a bus, whose passengers — all of whom are white, except a handful — are of a mixed mind as to why they’re there. The younger ones want the experience of joining up with a huge frat party on the Mall. The older ones are politically in- volved and see Stewart’s tongue-in-cheek rally as a way to stick it to the Tea Party and support President Obama and the struggling Democrats. They do share one thing with the Beck
fans: They are so frustrated with the two main political parties that they’re look- ing to entertainers to provide leadership, even if it means attending a rally staged by two faux newscasters. Miriam Winocour, 63, a former ad-
ministrative assistant at Time magazine who was raised in a “liberal, upper West Side family” with a journalist father and a Socialist mother, gets the irony. “There’s such a crossover between news and entertainment now,” she says, as the bus swings onto the New Jersey Turnpike. She starts unpacking a small cafeteria’s worth of peanut butter sand- wiches, bagels and cookies, and asks: “If Jon Stewart is a fake news show, is this a fake demonstration?” But Amanda Marks, 43, an entertain-
ment writer living in Manhattan, says the farce is part of the appeal. “We are using a comedy rally to point out the absurdity of politics,” she says. “I am hard-pressed to think of anything the Democratic estab- lishment could do to get me schlepping to Washington like this.” James Toomey, a thin 16-year-old
with chin-length brown hair from Hun- tington, N.Y., jokes that he’s a “big friend of sanity.” Thinking he sounds pretty flip, I ask why he is giving up a perfectly good Saturday to be here. His response mirrors what so many other riders are hoping.
24 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | december 12, 2010
“This could definitely do something,”
he says. “And I want to be part of it.” h
The true believers on the bus have a long history of involvement in Democratic causes. As we pass Phila- delphia, I chat with Leslie Shields, 54, of Oyster Bay, N.Y., who has attended marches on behalf of Planned Parent- hood, against the Iraq war and for the quirky antiwar group Code Pink. She’s going to show support for Obama. “I feel the need to get galvanized,” she says. “It’s taking civic responsibility for the kind of situation we’re in, and too many Ameri- cans won’t do that.” An organizational consultant,
Shields has not had full-time work in two years, but she’s not blaming the president. “I’m unhappy with some of the things he’s done, but I still support him,” she says. “People are too demand-
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