Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear took place 10 years ago today

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About 215,000 people attended the rally in Washington D.C.'s National Mall in advance of the 2010 midterm election. Earlier this year, Alex Shepard noted in The New Republic that the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was largely forgotten in end-of-the-decade remembrances at the end of 2019. "The rally was a huge success: 200,000 people crowded the Mall in Washington, D.C., to watch Stewart and Colbert do their bits on stage, accompanied by musicians like John Legend and Kid Rock," wrote Shepard just after New Year's Day. "But it hasn’t aged well. Stewart’s call for Americans to transcend party lines and concentrate on their shared aspirations is embarrassing to watch in 2019. Though largely forgotten for good reason—it is, aside from Rosewater, probably the least funny thing Stewart has done—it serves as a milestone in recent political history: a nadir in the left’s years-long refusal to reckon with the extremist right."