COLUMN: The Fourth Estate

Washington, D.C. — I’ve never seen so many signs.

But of the hundreds on the National Mall on Saturday, one struck me as especially poignant: “When comedians are our Fourth Estate, we’re in trouble.”

We picked our spot at 2 a.m. Saturday — 10 hours before the “Rally to Restore Sanity” started. About 50 people were there, most of them students from American University in Washington.

The first thing I saw when I awoke at 7 a.m. were black Nike shoes with a red swoosh a few inches from my face.

I readjusted my father’s 1970s American flag sleeping bag to block out the rising sun. I had nothing to eat, nothing to drink and couldn’t sit down. I was dehydrated, craving a cigarette, without a cell phone and had to stand for seven hours.

It was about then that I tried to remember why I came. Why I made the 10-hour drive through five states to stand among tens of thousands of people.

And then I saw the sign.

I’ve been watching “The Daily Show” since I was in high school. When Jon Stewart announced the rally, my roommates and I agreed on the spot to go.

It doesn’t take a sarcastic, late-night comedian to see that political dialogue is less about facts and the truth and more about opinions and spin.

That’s tough for someone like me to admit. If I’ve dedicated my life to anything so far, it’s the idealistic belief that journalism can make a profound difference in the world.

And it has — just not the way I hoped.

Big news agencies are choking the moderate voice into submission, especially on TV. Everyone is either left-wing or right-wing. There’s no room — or ratings — for the middle ground.

Moderates are deemed weak, passive and feeble-minded. Labels, overgeneralizations and name-calling ground debate at the lowest level.

And our leaders in D.C. follow suit, letting politics and re-elections, not results, define the most important debates of our time.

Journalists love the vocal extremes. It gives them the illusion of balance and fairness and all the other words they love to throw around as signs of their equity.

These days on college campuses, it’s all about voting. Exercise your rights, they say, be a part of the solution.

I’ve never bought it. I voted when I was 18 and young and optimistic.

But last year I opted out — a protest vote if you will — and this year I will do the same.

Political science classes say the cost of voting far outweighs the immediate benefits. I agree. To me, it’s the other, daily vote that we make with our remotes and mice that really matter.

Because in a free market we can only blame ourselves — the consumers. Everyone casts a vote every day much more important than the one you’ll make tomorrow.

Each time we reward lazy, newstertainment media we take one step away from a solution.

It’s time to take back the country from our politicians and talking heads.

It’s time to change the context of the conversation and the rules for discourse. It’s time for change you can believe.

Maybe then comedians won’t have to be our Fourth Estate.