Jon Stewart Rally Lauded by Obama

During a discussion on the economyin Richmond, Virginia today, President Obama approvingly mentioned Jon Stewart's upcoming "Rally to Restore Sanity"- though he didn't get the name quite right. (Mr. Obama said he thought the event might be called "Americans in Favor of a Return to Sanity.")

The president went on to endorse the point of the October 30th rally, despite his lack of familiarity with the details. He echoed Stewart's point that "70 percent of folks are just like you...they don't go around calling people names, they don't make things up."

The president was contrasting "folks like you" with the people who appear on cable news. He said such people have calculated that they can take controversial opinions and then make money off their professed extremism. Such people "get rewarded in the way our media is set up right now," he said.

The challenge, he said, is to make sure people who want to solve problems, not yell at each other, get heard - people who are "expecting some common sense and some courtesy in how people interact," he said. That's exactly the message of the Stewart rally, which is described as being for "the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat."

The president called it "disquieting" that it sometimes "seems like everybody out there is yelling at each other and angry." It is thus important, he said, to have reasonable "voices lifted up."

"So hopefully, you know since they got a whole bunch of cameras here, somebody was just listening to you," he said.