Rally To Restore Sanity's Roots: 'Crank Up The Crazy And Rip Off The Knob' (VIDEO)

For the next few days, we'll be celebrating the upcoming Rally To Restore Sanity/March To Keep Fear Alive by highlighting the ways in which "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" have long advocated reasonableness. You're invited to take part! Remember a "moment of sanity" that was dear to you? Send me an email and tell me about it!

-------------

We've got to give America's Clown Prince of Fearmongering, Stephen Colbert, his due in the lead up to the Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear as well, and so we turn our attention back to March 4, 2009. Glenn Beck had just shown America the interior of his id-soaked "War Room," where he got down to the business of gaming out unlikely scenarios of disaster and woe so that his viewers would be more likely to jump at the sight of their own shadows and get heavily invested in cash-for-gold scams. Colbert liked what he saw, but basically saw it merely as a good start to some top-flight paranoia stoking.

So, Colbert got himself a doom bunker, some scary graphics, and some even more unlikely scenarios, all in the service of teaching Glenn how to "crank up the crazy and rip off the knob." Someday soon, maybe all of our news reports will look like this, and I will make a killing selling bathtub Klonopin to the masses.

WATCH PART ONE:

PART TWO:

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]