I'd have a million dollars...provided I started with a hundred million dollars!

[kaitou]

Have you been following The Daily Show vs. CNBC feud? If not, for the love of God, WHY not? It's amazing. Get thee to thedailyshow.com with all deliberate speed. The whole thing can be see in the LH sidebar because Comedy Central knows it's got a good thing.

The first piece, "CNBC Gives Financial Advice," is one of the better pieces the Daily Show has ever done, hands down. Stewart just eviscerates an entire network.

There are a few other pieces, but the next really good one is "Basic Cable Personality Clash Skirmish '09" where you watch Stewart watch Jim Cramer watch one of the earlier Stewart pieces when he went on the Today Show to defend himself. You can just see the humor fade from Cramer's face as the clip roles.

The first time I saw it I actually felt a little bad for Cramer. Then I remembered that he was purposely going on all the other NBC programs to complain about his treatment. And then I thought...the Daily Show airs at 11:00 at night, the Today Show is on in the morning. How did he and his people NOT think to watch the show and prep for it? If you're in a fight, doesn't it make sense to keep tabs on what the other guy is saying? Stupid, stupid, stupid. And then! I had a third thought and felt a little bad for him again. His sister network, which he went to for support, totally set him up with that clip. And then I come back to the fact that he was stupid enough to walk right into it, and you know, as Stewart points out, the people that lost money by listening to him had it a lot worse.

And last night the whole thing culminated with Cramer being the special guest. And they devoted almost the entire episode to the interview. And I really think it was one of John Stewart's better interviews. One of the things I like about Stewart is that his role as a fake news anchor gives him a little more leeway than a traditional journalist, and he's more free to represent himself as 'one of us' instead of an objective observer. So when he's talking to Jim Cramer, he's talking to him as a normal person with the same worries for himself as the rest of us.

And he doesn't let him off the hook either. I didn't think that the interview would actually descend into a fight, but Cramer was more submissive than I expected. But Stewart doesn't just let him say 'mea culpa, forgive and forget.' He calls Cramer out, and backs it up with evidence. THIS is how you interview someone. Cramer talks about how people came on his show and lied, but maybe they wouldn't have gotten away with all the lies if people had done their research and asked better questions than "So is it fun being a billionaire?"

Jon Stewart, you are my hero.

Comments

[twigcollins.livejournal.com]

Cramer really, really needed to leave this one alone, since initially he was really a smaller part of the overall statement, which was mostly that other guy claiming that homeowners were at fault for making stupid decisions while he works for a 'news' organization that is practically a stupid decision factory.

Does no one remember the last time Jon Stewart got serious and took down Crossfire? The man is frighteningly good at exactly this sort of takedown, and his position as comedian plus that intellect leaves him near-invulnerable to counterattack. I think Jon Stewart couched this entire thing in a lot of wonderfully self-depricating humor, but in the end he asked a lot of really vital, important questions.

One of these people came to the fight prepared like a journalist should be. The other thought the usual half-assed approach would be enough. It's like some sick mutual agreement among the media - if you do a half-ass job, and I do a half-ass job, we can coast along in mediocrity until it's time to retire. I kind of feel sorry for Cramer for being the one to get sent out to the Jon Stewart firing squad, but I hope this doesn't detract from the larger picture - they all suck, just as much as he does.

Cramer brought a cream pie to a gunfight.

[kaitou1412.livejournal.com]

I don't think Cramer is the right whipping boy for this fight...I don't know that he ever pretended to 'journalism' on his show (I could be wrong, I don't watch it), but since he's the one who took the bait he's brought the rest on himself.

It boggles the mind that he didn't prep for the interview. He's been on the Colbert report a few times, he knows how they work. How do you not know that the Daily Show team will do it's research? You know they spent this week finding every bit of evidence on Cramer they could. Cramer went on the Martha Stewart show? SRSLY? I mean, SRSLY? Go make a pie with someone convicted of Insider Trading? That's your lead in?

It was visciously satisfying every time Stewart rolled a bit of that 2006 interview where Cramer advised illegal and immoral practices.

[anchan218.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links on this. I don't watch the daily show (heck, we don't have cable) but I really enjoyed these.

Jon Stewart said a number of times that it was really about CNBC and not so much about Cramer and I agree. But I think I'd take it a step further and expand it to most, if not all news networks/programs out there.

My husband and several friends here complain a lot about media bias. How you'll see CNN, MSNBC, and a number of other news channels/programs bash Bush to no end, but treat Obama like he's the second coming and not ask any of the hard questions. They tend to like Fox, one because they're conservative and two because Fox tends to take the dissenting view when compared to most other TV stations. I, however, like no major news programs/channels much because I hate the obvious bias all of them take (at least from what I've seen of them).

I think if there were a more impartial choice out there, that my husband might choose that instead. For example, he seems to like the O'Reilly show's tagline of "The spin stops here, because we're looking out for you." Not that I particularly believe that - O'Reilly is obviously conservative and doesn't really take pains to hide it.

What Jon Stewart said in his interview with Cramer actually articulates what I want to see from news programs and channels - not acting as a mouthpiece for conservative or liberal ideology, but something that tries to watch out for everyday people regardless of personal ideologies. Even better that this was done in an intelligent manner without the screaming fights or sensationalism so often adopted by news programs to get ratings. How sad that I finally see what I want from a news program in an interview on show whose main aim is comedy, not news. The shows that try to do news for a living ought to be ashamed of themselves to be outdone in their own business by a show on comedy central.

[anchan218.livejournal.com]

I should add that I do feel sorry for Cramer in all this. Maybe he should have come more prepared to the Today Show and Daily Show and maybe he did go crying around to other NBC shows about what the Daily Show was saying, but he took a lot of hard knocks from Stewart on behalf of CNBC just because he happened to speak up. I interpret this as he actually cares about the work that he does and trying to do what is right for his viewers. He was a pretty good sport throughout the whole interview considering all the critism he took on behalf of the entire network and sounded to me like he's willing to take Jon Stewart's feedback to heart and try to do what he can to do better in the future. Maybe I'm wrong.

[kaitou1412.livejournal.com]

It's FOX I can't really watch/read. I don't really watch cable news, I tend to get my news from the websites. I've found them to be too Right Wing, and I'm pretty turned off by Fox's focus on T&A in their entertainment section. They have a regular feature called 'Pop Tarts' and articles on 'Failed Boob Jobs,' which seems counter to the moral conservative stance.

I agree with you, I want the news, not a pro-right OR pro-left version of it. I want reporters to do their homework and not just accept any soundbite handed to them.

If you don't watch (though you can watch all the episodes free online) both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report often focus on ripping into the media, the spin, the hypocrisy, the lack of real investigation or hard questioning. It's arguably when they're at their best. They often go back and find the sound clips of politicians contradicting themselves, or showing their utter lack of understanding about what they're talking about.

One of the best things ever on the Colbert Report was when he interviewed a Senator who'd proposed a bill to have a statue of the 10 commandments outside the Supreme Court, and there'd been much back and forth about separation of church & state vs. the commandment's place in legal history...and Colbert just asked the Senator to name the 10 commandments.....and he COULDN'T. It was more telling than any expert analysis or spin of any kind.

[kaitou1412.livejournal.com]

I felt sorry for him at first. But more and more I'm not. I feel bad for him that he ended up the poster child of Stewart's attack, when there are plenty of others that deserve it equally. But he stepped up to it. And, though he was awfully apologetic in the interview, he was less so when he went back to his own show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtD9egNyxM8
Now it makes sense why he went on the Martha Stewart Show before going on the Daily Show. Now he can dismiss "Stewart" with a joke.

[anchan218.livejournal.com]

I guess he figured it's fair treatment as Jon is a comedian? LOL

I still feel somewhat sorry for him - sure he stepped up to it, but still it's someone in charge of CNBC that really deserved the bulk of the criticism. :P

[anchan218.livejournal.com]

I'll have to check them out sometime (when I'm not working quite as much...) :) Thanks for the tip!