Rally To Restore Sanity

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

Poster for the rally
Date	October 30, 2010
Location	The National Mall, Washington, D.C. Satellite rallies in 20 or more U.S. cities including Austin, Texas; Los Angeles; Chicago; Denver; Honolulu and Boise, Idaho
Participants	Hosts Stephen Colbert Jon Stewart Featured guests The MythBusters (Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman) Don Novello Sam Waterston Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Musical performers The Roots and John Legend 4troops Jeff Tweedy and Mavis Staples Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow Ozzy Osbourne, Yusuf Islam and The O'Jays Tony Bennett
Website	Official website

The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was a gathering that took place on October 30, 2010, at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The rally was led by Jon Stewart, host of the satirical news program The Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert, in-character as a conservative political pundit. About 215,000 people attended the rally, according to aerial photography analysis by AirPhotosLive.com for CBS News.

The rally was a combination of what initially were announced as separate events: Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" and Colbert's counterpart, the "March to Keep Fear Alive." Its stated purpose was to provide a venue for attendees to be heard above what Stewart described as the more vocal and extreme 15–20% of Americans who "control the conversation" of American politics, the argument being that these extremes demonize each other and engage in counterproductive actions, with a return to sanity intended to promote reasoned discussion. Despite Stewart's insistence to the contrary, news reports cast the rally as a spoof of Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally and Al Sharpton's Reclaim the Dream rally.

On August 28, 2010, the Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck held a "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial. On the same day, Al Sharpton led a countermarch, called Reclaim the Dream, to mark the 47th anniversary of the historic Great March on Washington. According to New York Magazine, discussion for a satirical public event in response took place behind the scenes at Stewart's The Daily Show as early as August 12. Stewart has stated that the rally was never intended to be a means to counter Glenn Beck, but was simply another format for his and Colbert's style of humor, saying "We saw [the Restoring Honor rally] and thought, 'What a beautiful outline. What a beautiful structure to fill with what we want to express in live form, festival form.'" Before any public discussion by Stewart, Colbert, or their staffs, members of the social news website Reddit independently began to discuss the possibility of a Colbert-led rally, often referred to as a "Restoring Truthiness Rally". After the rallies were announced, some news articles credited Reddit for the idea. The rally was produced by Stewart's Busboy Productions.