Jon Stewart's 'Rally to Restore Sanity' to be Broadcast and Streamed Live

(Oct. 13) -- First the nation watched live as honor was restored. Soon, it will have the opportunity to see the same done to sanity.

As with the Glenn Beck rally before, millions of Americans who cannot physically travel to Washington, D.C., will watch rallies hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in our nation's capital on their television and computer screens. On Tuesday, Stewart announced to viewers of "The Daily Show" that the show's website would host a live feed of the event, and that Comedy Central would also broadcast portions of the two rallies.

"Comedy Central is willing to pre-empt the network's regularly scheduled mid-afternoon Saturday broadcast of 'Broken Lizard's Club Dread'" Stewart joked. "That's how important they think it is."

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Portions of Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally were carried live on C-SPAN and could be viewed in its entirety via UpStream video feed on the event's Facebook page.

While the question of which television host will draw the bigger audience, both in person and on television and over the Internet, continues to provide an interesting sub-plot to the strikingly differing political philosophies that each man holds, neither Stewart nor Beck seems particularly interested in making the crowd size comparison.

In an interview with NPR's Terry Gross, Stewart said that despite "Restoring Honor's" clear influence on the "Rally to Restore Sanity," the Oct. 30 gathering wasn't designed simply to poke fun at Beck.

"People have said, 'It's a rally to counter Glenn Beck.' It's not," Stewart told Gross. "What it is was, we saw that and thought, 'What a beautiful outline. What a beautiful structure to fill with what we want to express in live form, festival form."

Meanwhile, Beck himself appears to harbor no ill-will to the Comedy Central comedic duo, nor anyone else who would take to the national mall, whatever the cause.

"8/28 was a historic event for a lot of Americans," Beck said in a statement back in September. "I hope that Ed Schultz, the AFL-CIO, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and whoever else wants to plan a march in D.C. have the same great success that we had with Restoring Honor."

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