Sanity? What Sanity?

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central are holding a rally in Washington - the final rally there by anyone in advance of the midterm elections - to restore sanity and/or fear to America. Personally, I vote for fear. I don't think America ever had any sanity.

Never? Well, think about it for a moment. Would a sane country produce the following sociocultural landmarks?

This is the country that made superstars out of Madonna and Lady Gaga without any semblance of irony. This is also the country that invented rap, a musical form that negates melody and notes.

We invented football, a game that's played with arms and hands. We take three hours to play this sixty-minute game.

We decided that public utilities - transportation, electricity, telephone service - should be privatized, while our sex lives should be public.

We started a religion based on science fiction.

We spend two years picking a leader for a four-year term. Among our choices: gutless weasels like Franklin Pierce; Warren G. Harding, who was a drunk; Richard Nixon, a raging paranoiac; Ronald Reagan, an imbecilic actor; and George Walker Bush. No explanation necessary there.

We invented the shopping mall, a building that puts all of Main Street under a roof, accessible primarily by car - a place that appeals mainly to teenagers too young to drive. For housing, to quote Don Henley, we put up a bunch of ugly boxes, and Jesus, people bought them. We gave these housing developments names like "Willow Glen" when there was no willow tree and no glen in the vicinity.

We built a neon gambling mecca in the middle of the desert. We built an amusement park in Florida the size of San Francisco - with its own monorail system!

We made huge cars that were too cumbersome to drive, with big tail fins and lots of chrome, and we built station wagons on truck platforms and called them "sport utility vehicles."

We have a U.S. Senator from Oklahoma who wants to make abortion a capital crime.

We put on our money, the root of all evil, the words "In God We Trust."

We put evangelists on television and underwear models on TV "news" programs.

We've had drive-in restaurants and we have drive-through pharmacies. Our "drug stores" sell more food and novelties than drugs. Americans buy plastic singing fish at these stores.

We make up pseudo-ethnic holidays and we celebrate our leaders' birthdays on Mondays for three-day weekends in . . . the middle of winter.

We buy frozen stuffed pancakes and we eat breakfast sandwiches from fast food restaurants whose hamburgers are non-biodegradable.

We commercialized health care and made the post office pay its own way.

We make scatological movies and turn our noses up at ballet.

We romanticize guns but make lovemaking seem dirty.

Only America could produce Sarah Palin.

I could go on like this all day, but I think I've made my point. Bring sanity to America? Yeah, good luck with that catching on.