Weeks after Fox News' Glenn Beck held his "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington DC, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have decided that this "political rally" thing might be something they'd like to get involved with themselves... just not together, is all.

Stewart and Colbert have announced competing rallies on October 30th, taking their shows' love/hate relationship with Beck to the next level. The Daily Show's event, Rally To Restore Sanity, hopes to bring calm, measured debate back to the political process:

We're looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it's appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles.

Are you one of those people? Excellent. Then we'd like you to join us in Washington, DC on October 30 -- a date of no significance whatsoever -- at the Daily Show's "Rally to Restore Sanity." Ours is a rally for the people who've been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs) -- not so much the Silent Majority as the Busy Majority. If we had to sum up the political view of our participants in a single sentence... we couldn't. That's sort of the point.

Meanwhile, The Colbert Report's competing March To Keep Fear Alive does... well, just the opposite:

America, the Greatest Country God ever gave Man, was built on three bedrock principles: Freedom. Liberty. And Fear -- that someone might take our Freedom and Liberty. But now, there are dark, optimistic forces trying to take away our Fear -- forces with salt and pepper hair and way more Emmys than they need. They want to replace our Fear with reason. But never forget -- "Reason" is just one letter away from "Treason." Coincidence? Reasonable people would say it is, but America can't afford to take that chance.

Comedy Central promises "a face-off that promises to be bigger than Nixon/Kennedy, Ali/Foreman, Aniston/Jolie, 50/Nas, Joe/The Volcano, Alien/Predator, Bunny/Fudd and Ecks/Sever combined," but I'm left wondering at what point a joke rally becomes a real rally, if thousands of people show up just because you asked them to.