Posted on 03/18/2009 9:14:40 AM PDT by Big_Monkey
There is a virtual ban on criticism of him in the press. Uncritical praise corrupts absolutely.
Jon Stewart’s recent attack on CNBC’s Jim Cramer was so brilliantly performed, so smoothly produced and cruelly compelling, almost nobody noticed that it didn’t make sense. The climax came as Stewart put up a number of grainy clips of Cramer describing how to artificially (and unethically) depress a company’s stock price. The video was damning. Cramer looked sweaty.
Stewart summed up the significance of what Cramer had said on the tape: “You can draw a straight line from those shenanigans to the stuff that was being pulled at Bear and at AIG, and all this derivative market stuff,” he said sternly.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
Once journalists who cover business regain their sense of responsibility and “start getting back to fundamentals on the reporting,” Stewart said gravely, “I can get back to making fart noises and funny faces.”....
Excuse me?, any responsibility you think you have in covering business is a fart!.....
Here’s my take. Stewart is a NY comic, in a NYC market. He uses sarcasm. Sarcasm denotes a superior view over the subject of the sarcasm. It is rarely directed inward. He’s perfect for liberals in NYC and media cohorts who think they are superior to others.
Actually it was a well done article. But I think it missed one important point.
Would Cramer have been attacked at all if he had NOT criticized Obama?
Nope.
And why is Cramer the only sacrifice to the financial mess? Stewart couldn’t find anyone else? Like maybe, a politician.
Nope.
Gee Barney Frank and Chris Dodd come to mind. Why not bring them in for as ass wiping?
Nope.
Good article. Stewart ceased being funny some time back.
Well which of America’s business. Not small to medium ones. They have the least support.
Corporate business and the politicians have been in bed with both parties.
They operate against the biggest job creators: small business.
Extremists actually do well in that kind of environment. Hitler’s rise being only one example. Japan would be another.
I don’t want IBM, AIG and Citigroup up there speaking on The Hill for business. They only speak for themselves at all of our peril. That’s apparent.
And don't flatter yourself Tucker, it doesn't even take a joke-teller to see your misdirection, your half-truths, and your outright lies:
Except that you can’t draw any such line. In the video, Cramer hadn’t mentioned derivates or securitized loans or credit-default swaps, or any of the other exotic financial instruments that caused the fall of AIG and the current recession. There’s no evidence that Jim Cramer had anything to do with any of that, and Stewart didn’t offer any.
Here's your "straight line": That video was five years old. Which in fact supports Stewart's point: Cramer is a crook and a liar and always was.
Stewart moved on to a new charge: Cramer and his colleagues at CNBC had known that the financial sector was in imminent danger of collapse, but had pretended otherwise—a ruse that Stewart described as “disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.” This was even more farther-fetched. A ratings-hungry TV network had the scoop of the decade but decided to sit on it?
Yeah they were the voice of reason during the tech-stock bubble, weren't they! And does anybody have a count of how many times CNBC told us the bottom of the housing market collapse was just around the corner? In 2007? In 2006? They sure treated Peter Schiff and Nouriel Roubini well during their ambush interviews at DJII 12K, didn't they!
at times Stewart seems like less a comedian than a courtier to the establishment
Riiiiiight. We here at FR all loved the fawning praise that The Daily Show regularly offered to President Bush, VP Cheyney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld..
I know that Frank has been on the Daily Show since this mess started. It was Stewart's regular sychophantic treatment of all things liberal.
As for Dodd, I'm not sure. I do remember him being on sometime last year when he was peddling a book he had written. I'm not a regular watcher of the show, so I could've missed him.
This is where you an I deeply differ about the role of journalism in ANY industry or political arena. You apparently believe it's the business journalist role to tell me how the markets should be behaving. I believe it's the role of business journalist to tell me how the markets are behaving.
Journalist of all stripes have taken on this roll the last 30 years or so of trying to modify peoples behavior. No thanks! Just give me the fact, all the facts and NOTHING but the facts.
There were PLENTY of instances when CNBC and other financial news outlets reported "record" housing prices with "historic" highs. Well, if you're not smart enough to recognize that as a warning sign of a bubble, then you're too stupid to be investing your money. But, I don't need a journalist to pontificating about the possible pitfalls of the free market system - just give me the facts.
Finally, Stewart had said multiple times during "serious" interviews the past several years that it was his obligation to "speak truth to power". Right now EVERY lever of political power is in the hands of the Democrats. And yet, his nightly show is nothing more than an in-kind contribution to the Democratic Party - and I think that is the overreaching point that Tucker succeeds in making.
Now now, no cherry-picking. If the issue is CNBC being an advocate vs being a reporter, then the perfect example is how they regularly ganged up with their perma-bull guests — often three or four to one — to ridicule Schiff and Roubini.
I note that that is the very part of my post that you cut out.
Money quote: "...a flag has been planted and a message sent that there will be a heavy price to pay for criticizing President Obama."
Are you another John Stewart suckophant? IMO carlson nailed the essence of Stewarts ruse with this: ‘
The relationship between Stewart and the media is a marriage of the self-loathing and the self-loving: He insists their real news is fake, they insist his fake news is real. He doesn’t take them seriously at all. They take him way too seriously. But nobody takes anybody as seriously as Jon Stewart takes himself.’
I'm not a big fan of all the commentary that replaced serious news reporting the last 20 years - business news is no exception. But, the mere presence of Schiff and Roubini on CNBC proves my point. Stewart is talking out his a$$ when he claims that CNBC didn't talk about the bubble. Did some of their analysts give crappy advice - yep, welcome to the world of financial prognostication. But, did they also give a voice to alarmist of the contemporary financial conditions - yep again.
Stewart, like so many in the journalism crowd, wants to blame EVERYTHING on the "mean" capitalist pigs who are infected with the fever of greed. And yet, nary a mention of the policies of the US government that either created or exacerbated conditions that led to this global economic down turn.
Has Stewart talked about Fannie or Freddie? Has he talked about Mark-to-Market's impact on balance sheets? Has he talked about a President signing a bill that he apparently now claims he didn't read? Or, has he talked to Senators who now claim they didn't write the legislation that they triumphantly took credit for wrting just three weeks ago.
Cramer may be a crook, a shill, a moron and a liar, but he's only an amateur in these trades that Stewart has professionally mastered.
I’m more of a Cramer-hater than a Stewart fan.
Check this out: Jon Stewart Puts Everyone On Notice (Big Hollywood) http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/03/17/jon-stewart-puts-everyone-on-notice/#more-82746
If anyone is an expert on being made a bitch by Jon Stewert, its Tucker Carlson.
I didn't think Stewart made Carlson his bitch during that Crossfire fiasco. I thought Stewart looked like he was off his meds - which he may have been.
Many professional comedians struggle with debilitating depression, self-loathing and even some with bi-polar disorder. Stewart may be no exception. Even Paul Begala commented at the time that Stewart's performance was out of character and bizarre.
How did CNN react? They used it as an excuse to eliminate one of, if not the only outlet for conservative debate and commentary on the entire network. No, if anyone was Stewart's bitch during that debacle, it was the head of CNN - and conservatives have been paying the price ever since.
No firm, larger or small, will go before Congress and speak
against it's own interests. What I don't want to see is
Congress and pontificating little Caesars like Barney Frank
(and 100 others) attempting to micro-manage the decisions of American business.
All these firms, large and small, should be left to succeed or fail on their own. Anything too “big to fail” should be broken up into smaller firms, in competition with each other, by regulators. The definition of “too big to fail” should be “failure of the target firm would bring risk of a cascading failure of other firms and institutions that, in combination, would be larger than the failure of the target firm”.
I freely admit that the wording of such a law would be very tricky indeed....but I always disagreed with the idea that as long as there are two firms in the same business, there is sufficient competition. Maybe thats because I both worked for, and then competed with, IBM.
Regulation should facilitate good business practice, not throttle it. I have heard that "Sarbanes/Oxley" is thought to have inhibited at least 10 billion in small business startups.
You’re right. Cramer was treated like he was a Republican because he dared to stand up to the king. Stewart’s a bully - and a mean one at that. But his big fat ego will start to get in the way - he already thinks regular journalists aren’t beating up those who don’t back Obama “enough”. He’s a little SS trooper - very tough his whole team behind him...
You’re straight up on business realities but taking as a given firms operating in their own interests, Congress doesn’t have to favor them over others.
In that respect they all deserve the same brush. They buy access and get “special treatment” that competitors, mainly smaller companies never do.
Just halting special treatment for corporate campaign donors would be a start. How about we lock up John Murtha and call it a beginning.
Sarbanes Oxley is of course onerous to business creation.
It’s not like Cramer had not been on the circuit before. Here’’s a clip of him on Colbert just last fall:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/187307/october-06-2008/jim-cramer
For some reason, no one attacked him then even though he said you can’t piin it on Bush. In fact I sent someone a clip of Cramer talking about the mortgage crisis and that person was for Obama and had a meltdown.
The Rats love to invite Republicans on their shows to disparage other Republicans or President Bush. They call this diversity of thought.
But if happens, even incidentally with a Democrat against Zero, this is the result.
That’s what people are missing about this. Even Dennis Miller didn’t point it out as he considers Stewart a friend in the comedian fraternity. And when you have your own show, no one is going to win. You will always have the last word. Thus Cramer’s capitulation in appearing on the show.
Stewart = Goebbels!
I'll supply the tar and feathers if you'll bring leg irons!
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