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The Restoring Honor Rally held on August 28, 2010 and the Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear) on October 30th were two media-led rallies with the former appealing to the political right and the latter mainly to the left. The images featured in the SoundSlides presentation above are from both of these rallies. 

The media figures involved in the rally -- Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert (in character) shaped the tenor and audience of these events. Beck's Restoring Honor Rally was serious in tone, making copious use of red, white, and blue in event decorations and using images of the nation's founders and prominent leaders in decor and memorabilia designs. The coincidence of the location of Beck's rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech was contested before the event. Indeed, it is rather strange to see MLK "speak" at Beck's event, as one of the pictures in the Soundslides presentation depicts. According to news coverage including an updated USA On Politics article on the event Beck claimed that the event was intended to be a return to the traditional values that he claims made this country great, encouraging faith in God among attendees of all religions, and the use of the rally as a chance for them to "change [their] li[ves]."

The combined events of Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity and Stephen Colbert's March to Keep Fear Alive responded to the climate of Glenn Beck's rally and a civil rights march held several miles from Beck's Rally by Al Sharpton, the "Reclaim the Dream" March, according to the Washington Post. The tone of this rally was more sarcastic and ironic with a number of signs mocking the practices of rallying and creating and carrying signs.

According to Jon Stewart by way of AFP, this rally was intended to gather "a million moderates march" on the National Mall in Washington DC in order to "make a strident call for rationality." Stewart continued on to suggest that the Rally would allow the "70-80 percent of Americans who try to solve the country's problems rationally" to "be heard above the more vocal and highly visual 15-20 percent who 'control the conversation.'" The combination of Stewart's and Colbert's events led to an environment where signs joking about moderation and reasonableness and less political jokes and memes blend together.