Long night. Epic television, ending with seeing the Syracuse Orange finally overcome the Connecticut Huskies in 6 overtimes. At the end, the teams were so exhausted that at times they looked like they were on the Bataan death march. Great, great game- an instant classic.
But the highlight of the night was not a slam dunk or a buzzer-beater.
On Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart gave CNBC money guru Jim Cramer a basic cable ass-whipping. He dressed him down from the very beginning and never let up. But it was a controlled, logical beatdown, not the hyperbolic confrontations we’ve become so accustomed to seeing on politically-based cable television.
I’m not going to go into every detail of the interview as it’s available online and should be seen in full. Stewart basically called out CNBC and Cramer for their complicity in enabling those who would sell the safety of the long-term investments of multitudes of investors for a short-term windfall.
Cramer’s defense was tepid at best, leaving my wife to finally turn to me and say, “What a pussy.”
It’s a sad commentary that such an important and serious discussion has to be addressed on Comedy Central. Maybe this points out the need for more regulation in the financial sector. What I mean by this is that journalism should be self-regulating by its very nature but when it is compromised to reperesent the interests of one group over another, it no longer serves its intended function and, in fact, becomes detrimental. If journalism cannot maintain a degree of self-regulation then how can anyone expect the financial world to do so?
Even today, there has been barely a mention of this much-touted showdown between Stewart and Cramer. On CNN, when there was a mention the host still didn’t get it, portraying Cramer as merely a weatherman making forecasts.
The difference is that the weatherman can’t manipulate the weather in the way that Cramer claimed he could manipulate the market as a hedge-fund manager in a 2006 video. That’s a big difference…
Sorry if this is a little disjointed. I’m a little tired from a late night. Anyway, I’ll leave you with a very funny parody of Glenn Beck from Stephen Colbert. Here is……………THE DOOM BUNKER!
Go, Orange!
Redtree Times 