Sanity stages a comeback

Do you ever feel like nearly everyone in the political spectrum was simultaneously dosed with crazy pills?

We've got a woman in Delaware who insists she isn't a witch, and who doesn't know what's in the First Amendment.  She's running for the Senate. On the Democratic side, there's the Senate candidate who is unemployed and lives at home with his dad. He won a primary race only because, as best anyone can figure, his name was first in order on the ballot. South Carolinians don't want to spend too much time reading, so they'll approve whatever is on the top line. That's not a recipe for success, is it?

This season's political ads include an apocalyptic vision where the President is explicitly compared to the angel of death, and although it appears the House leadership may change, there's no cogent reason why. But wait, it gets better. A full 19 years after Anita Hill's testimony in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, Thomas' wife Ginny (short for way too many Gin & Tonics) is demanding an apology. You can't make this stuff up.

On October 30 (the Saturday after next), I'm joining Jon Stewart in calling for a time out. Look, there's got to be wide swath of the country that understands the similarity between the collective national choo choo going 'round the bend and Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography: "I know it when I see it."

On Saturday, October 30th, the weekend before election day, the Capitol end of the National Mall will host the Rally for Sanity. Proposed sign messages include:

• You may have a point, but all the shouting makes it difficult to understand you
• Real patriots can handle a difference of opinion
• I prefer facts, nuance and intellectual debate (but I'm probably not a 'real American')
• Correctly spelled slogan
• I understand you disagree with my point of view. I'm okay with that.
• Death to nobody
• I support the sign that I am holding
• Don't Panic

That last one is a tribute to Douglas Adams, and if you know where your towel is, you're all set.

Get the idea of the Rally for Sanity? Bring it down a notch. Breathe. Get a grip. Extremism has no utility whatsoever. Name calling, mindless hysteria and insisting at the top of your lungs that the end of the world is at hand and THOSE people are to blame won't do anything other than antagonize all sides.

Electing the person who approves the nastiest fear-mongering advertisement will create worse public servants, not better. The towering unemployment figures and increased home foreclosures are not one person's fault. It took a long time, thousands of factors and more missed decisions than can be counted to arrive at the mess we're in today. The only way we're going to get out of it will be to behave like adults, not spoiled, bratty children hopped up on junk food, sugary drinks and crack pipes.

Reason is good. I'm telling you sanity is what we need. If on October 30 you join the voices of "Chicken Little is Wrong, Dammit," maybe we'll all have a fighting chance of seeing a better brand of public discourse.