It was just a good old party for liberals: harmless, fun and it batted Beck right out of the park

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had their big day in the nation's capital Saturday, taking their roadshow of dueling mockery to a big stage set up on the national Mall. For the people who were there, what happened onstage didn't really matter so much, because I'd guess that at the very least--and this is a conservative estimate--half of the people there couldn't hear or see enough of it to really know what was going on.

They weren't really there for the politics. They were there for the party. This was a spectacle, bottom line. The message was mixed, mostly because of the audio...but also because the stage show seemed to alternate between appeals for sanity, general humor, music, and criticism of the media.

As Josh Green points out, no one was really sure what the purpose of the whole thing was.

The immediate takeaway: The crowd was massive. Way bigger than the Glenn Beck rally in July.

The Mall was packed for about five blocks, and, past the point where the big, central grassy areas were roped off, a thick crowd of people milled around or another four blocks or so. The crowd spilled off the mall for at least a block to the North and South; people lined up, wielding sarcastic signs, along the steps and terraces of the Smithsonian museums.

The sound of helicopters echoed off the big white museum buildings; sirens sounded frequently from the streets around the Mall; people chatted amongst each other; a drum circle formed around 12th St. (the stage was at 3rd); and all this meant that the rallygoers couldn't really hear what was going on, much less see it on the two jumbotrons at each side of the stage. The atmosphere was partyish, not serious. At all. ...Chris Good, The Atlantic