Stephen Colbert keeps the fear alive

March to Keep Fear Alive

Oct. 30, noon to 3 p.m.

National Mall,… March to Keep Fear Alive

Oct. 30, noon to 3 p.m.

National Mall, Washington

Although lately the United States seems beset by trouble, Stephen Colbert has faith in that most timeless American sentiment: fear.

“The fight-or-flight response is why our ancestors survived and other lines of humanity died out,” Colbert said. “We knew to be afraid of snakes. The people who didn’t know to be afraid of snakes did not get to have children.”

A mostly in-character Colbert offered these quips and others during a Friday conference call with student journalists in support of his March to Keep Fear Alive — a tongue-in-cheek gathering on the National Mall to complement Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity at the same place and time.

“This is not going to be a religious event,” Colbert said of his march. “I find God to be too soothing and calming.”

He did, however, hope his participants would be fervent.

“I want [people] to be acting out of emotion and not out of reason,” Colbert said. “Rationality gets you things like the atomic bomb. That’s what logic will get you. Whereas fearing the atomic bomb is the thing that kept us safe during the Cold War.”

Colbert said he was nostalgic for the time when fear was omnipresent, and Americans knew they lingered on the brink of destruction.

“Back [when I was an undergrad] the fear was nuclear annihilation from the Russians,” Colbert said. “I and so many of our friends had nightmares that that’s how we were going to die — that Reagan was going to go toe-to-toe with Gorbachev and push the button. That was the biggest fear.”

After a moment, he added, “Oh, and AIDS!”

Colbert said an acute sense of “the other” is essential for a healthy anxiety.

“If you drop your fear of our enemies — who can be internal or external — people become complacent and make their decisions through reason,” he cautioned.

For better or for worse, Colbert said he didn’t think the financial crisis has triggered such rationality.

“All these houses are being foreclosed. The government is trying to stop banks from foreclosing houses and everybody’s afraid that if we don’t foreclose houses just as fast as we started funding these houses, then we won’t ever find out where the bottom of the market is. But all those decisions are not being made through careful consideration — they’re being made through fear,” he said.

When one journalist remarked that these all sounded like poor decisions, Colbert countered that, “They get stuff done.”

“I don’t know if you’ve ever had a term paper or a paper due the next day — you know, an overnight wonder that you’ve written at school,” he continued. “You got that done in one night because you were afraid of not getting it done.”

Lengthy analogies aside, many of Colbert’s responses were one-liners: If he had to dress up as his biggest fear, as he instructed his rally’s participants to do, what would his costume be?

“Is it possible to dress up as a mosque?”

What was his biggest fear?

“Bears. They’re godless killing machines.”

Wouldn’t it be a more effective rally if he and Stewart teamed up?

“Oh my God, you’ve convinced me!”

While lighthearted throughout, Colbert briefly segued out of character to champion DonorsChoose.org, a charity organization in which schools request funding for certain projects and donors give them amounts of their choosing. Colbert is on the organization’s board of directors.

“It’s a way to have immediate effect, and you know exactly where 100 percent of the money’s going,” he said. “It’s so immediate and so clear how it’s helping.”

As for Colbert and Stewart’s dual gatherings, Pitt students had divergent views on their merits. Some praised their intentions, but others thought they trivialized serious issues.

“I think it’s overblown,” Jordan Fremuth, a senior English literature and writing major, said of the assemblies. “Although [Stewart and Colbert] are legitimate members of the media, I think the way in which they approach these events belittles it. A national identity is a problem right now because we don’t have one. Joking about it isn’t going to solve anything.”

Chunrong Chen, a political science Ph.D. candidate, had a more positive outlook.

“I think this kind of rally can bring political awareness,” Chen said, with the qualification that rallies of such magnitude raise “logistical” and financial concerns.

Jesse Horst, a graduate student in the history department, thought the rallies were a good idea but remarked that, “Jon Stewart needs to develop his own kind of platform. He pokes a lot of holes in cable news but doesn’t have a platform of his own.”

Colbert took decidedly more comedic jabs at his former boss — stressing at several points that his March to Keep Fear Alive would vanquish Stewart’s tepid Rally to Restore Sanity. After all, he said, “Fear is ubiquitous. And I don’t even know what ubiquitous means.”