Jon Stewart's cringeworthy dismantling of Jim Cramer on the Daily Show
Unless you've been shipwrecked on that proverbial island that people get shipwrecked on whenever they're completely ignorant to things most everyone else is seemingly aware of, you know that last night was the night that CNBC's Jim Cramer went on the Daily Show as a guest to defend himself and the network he works for against the laundry list of crimes and criticisms that Jon Stewart and many others have charged them with in the midst of this whole worldwide financial clusterfuck. But what Cramer wound up doing was not so much a defense as it was someone throwing himself at the mercy of the court.
On a day that the biggest financial swindler in the history of the world plead guilty to his crimes and was promptly shuffled off to prison, Jim Cramer walked out onto the stage and took a seat across from Stewart fully prepared to do basically the same thing, to plead guilty and hope for mercy, only in this instance he was essentially acting as the sacrificial lamb for the entirety of the embattled financial news network he works for. He was sheepishly contrite throughout, arguably too much so, offering little or no defense to Stewart's superbly-prepared prosecution. Rather than attempt to deflect what was thrown at him, Kramer agreed politely with most of Stewart's charges. But then again, what really could he say? Coincidental timing to the Madoff thing aside, he sort of reminded me of a defendant in court who has plead guilty to a crime he was caught red-handed for who has to sit there and be berated by a judge after he's thrown himself at the mercy of the court.
"I'm sorry...I messed up...I'll try harder next time...I promise."
For me personally, it wasn't a pretty thing to watch. In fact, it was downright painful. Cringeworthy is an apt word for it. Hell, I actually found myself feeling sorry for Jim Cramer, and I still haven't figured out if what happened last night will destroy his career or save it. My gut tells me it's the latter, but I guess time will tell on that.
But if this whole shitstorm does wind up destroying Cramer, I feel that the people who work for CNBC should hail him as a diety for the remainder of his days, for what he did last night was allow himself to be crucified and buried in a shallow grave for all of their sins. I guess you could say that Jim Cramer is CNBC's Jesus Christ.
So anyway...I've embedded the second part of the interview, my semi-favorite but perhaps the most cringeworthy of the three parts that Comedy Central broke it up into, below. Unfortunately, they didn't splice it all into one embeddable video, and placing three videos in one post might slow down the page loading on your computer, so I'll just link to the Daily Show's website where you can watch the whole thing, unedited, here. Kinda annoying maybe, I know. Sorry bout that. Anyway, here's part two of the interview...
A side note...isn't it so inherently sad that this nation's two most fearless media personalities when it comes to holding truth to power seem to be comedians with late night talk shows, Jon Stewart and David Letterman?
5 comments:
isn't it so inherently sad that this nation's two most fearless media personalities when it comes to holding truth to power seem to be comedians
Will Rogers in the 1930s fulfilled the same role. I think it's actually easier for the comedians, because the serious news outlets were buying this shit from the so-called experts.
First, I can't imagine this whole situation is going to have any effect on Cramer whatsoever. I bet a vast majority of the population that watches CNBC wouldn't even know who Jon Stewart is.
Second, Stewart brought up some good dirt on Cramer and deservedly so. But I feel he went to far in basically saying that all of Wall Street was in on a big scam and they all knew about it. Very, very few people thought it would be this bad. Look at Buffett. He has taken massive losses. Bear Sterns employees also got killed. These guys were trading with a lot of their own money and went bust. I don't think a lot of investment banks saw the writing and I think the issues that created this mess were much larger than Wall Street hubris.
ritamac
Well said. Good satire has always been one of the best ways to make a point.
That was an intense interview. Kramer kept dancing around his rebuttal to Stewart's argument, which is effectively they can't call these people out on their BS unless they have some evidence to stand on. Not that this excuses parroting what CEOs tell them. But man, there was some serious energy going on there. That is the most torqued-up I've ever seen Stewart.
cnbc sucks, but stewart misses the point about "shorting the market" and cramer in that video 2006 is talking the reality of the market. because he can't say it on tv now he doesn't correct stewart on short-selling. cramer refers to it as "shennanigans" but if you eliminate the ability to "short" the market in any form you essentially destroy it. cramer also somehow slips Madoff in the discussion. Madoff wasn't trading at all, short or long.
The problem is in the American psyche, the stock market IS the economy. This is a myth perpetrated by CNBC and the media. We have been suckered by the mutual fund industry, the media, and big business who got sick of providing those pesky pension plans and gave us 401ks instead. Now we think the stock market only goes up. Reality is it goes up for about 25 years then goes down for about 25 years. Read some books on investing I recommend "Trading your way to financial freedom" by Van K. Tharp. It explains the only way you should think about investing.
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