With Glen Beck and Jon Stewart leading rallies, is the U.S. heading toward personality media? This weekend’s Rally to Restore Sanity left some journalists scratching their heads about how to cover the event. Spying a mainstream media meltdown, the liberal-leaning PoliticsUSA blog posted clips of network journalists trying to figure out what to call the thing. National Public Radio decided it was a partisan political gathering, and forbade its reporters from taking part.

Meanwhile, the New York Times' Brian Stelter saw the rally as media criticism in action, culminating in Jon Stewart’s speech.

New media promoter Jeff Jarvis caught the underlying message: “I must confess that I came away feeling a bit ashamed to be a member of the media and journalism tribe…We are evil coaches on grade school playgrounds, making sides and then pitting them against each other.”

But let’s not end Big Issue on a downer. The Huffington Post’s 100 best signs gallery prove there’s still room for humour in the American political discourse.

This was first posted on J-Source, a blog covering media ideas and news where this first appeared. J-Source is published by the Canadian Journalism Foundation in collaboration with leading journalism schools and organizations across Canada.