Over 200,000 people from across North America rallied for sanity on October 30 at the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

The event combined Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" and Stephen Colbert's campaign to "Keep Fear Alive." The two political pundits are Comedy Central darlings, and while the rally did generate some laughs, the message was a bit more serious.

Jacqueline Cole, a first-year law student at the University of Western Ontario, attended the event with a friend. She explained, "It was really centred on what the media's reaction (to the rally) will be and how that's kind of a skewed portrayal of what's actually going on (on a larger scale) and how it's preventing real discourse on issues from taking place."

Cole said one of the best segments of the rally was when Daily Show correspondents demonstrated how the media can easily skew stories. Both correspondents stood in the same area of the crowd, interviewing the same person.

"They had one correspondent with very specific camera work saying (it was a) 'great group of patriotic Americans coming together.' The other one (had a) shaky handheld camera (calling the crowd) 'a bunch of left-wing radicals who don't even know why they're here.'"

Cole said the contrast was thought-provoking. "This is the event that's going on right now, and this is how it's being portrayed. It's very believable. That was kind of interesting, because they made fun of it at the time and I think that it was kind of accurate to how some news outlets followed up on it."

One thing the media has definitely picked up on was the many signs at the rally. Slogans ranged from nonsensical ("Sweet, succulent, sexy Jesus, give me sanity") to insightful ("If your beliefs fit on a sign, think harder…"). Cole and her friend did not bring signs — "We literally walked out the door with our BlackBerries and sunglasses," she laughed — but they enjoyed seeing what the signs had to say.

"I have so many favourite (signs) — I don't even know how to choose one. The signs that I like best ... are a lot of the very basic, rational, reasonable signs because it's just so suited to the purpose of the rally."

The rally did have some detractors, such as Bill Maher. "If you are going to have a rally in which hundreds of thousands of people show up, you might as well make it about something," he said on his television show.

Cole indicated she disagreed with this statement: "It was inspiring and interesting," she said. "(It was a) way to get a feel of what the issues were in the U.S. from the perspective of actually being there as opposed to just watching it on television."