Sanity and Reason

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Saturday's "Rally to restore sanity and/or Fear" held in the National Mall in Washington DC by US satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert was a notable event on a number of counts, not so much for the sometimes wooden performances themselves (I am not a Colbert fan) but the idea itself. The dumbing down of enquiry and debate in the media in recent decades was the focus of the attack, the fear mongers and irrational ranters. Many times in these pages I have had cause to note striking parallels between the writings of the no-questions-asked antiquities trade lobby and the US loony right, exactly the same trigger words, the same attitudes. The Ancient Coin Collectors' Guild and the dealers they are clearly affiliated with apply methods in drumming up support which are entirely Glenn-Beckian. Using the modern media to obfuscate the debate, throwing up smokescreens and eliciting knee-jerk reactions to inflamatory statements are their preferred tactics. Avoiding open and reasonable debate is another. The fax bombing campaigns of the no-questions-asked trade lobbyists have been based on misleading their audience into reacting to imaginary threats. Now the CPAC public submission campaigns are online we can all at last see the shallowness of the debate offered by the naysayers to preservation.

Jon Stewart gave quite a thought-provoking summing up speech at the end of the Washington rally pointing out the role of the superficiality of the media in producing the shocking bipolarism which is the external face of US politics which we see today.

“The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous, flaming ant epidemic”.

Stewart calls the US media “the country’s 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator,” which, he added, “did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder”. Is that not exactly a description of the activities of groups like the ACCG, Tim Haines' Yahoo Ancient Artefact Group? Is that not a reflection of the attitudes enshrined in the closed access UK metal detecting forums?

Vignette: Jon Stewart at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear (Drew Angerer/The New York Times)