Jon Stewart Continues His Smackdown on Market-Worshipping Jim Cramer and CNBC

By Isaac Fitzgerald, AlterNet
Posted on March 12, 2009, Printed on December 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/131159/

The fight between Jon Stewart and CNBC started out with a "brutal, but utterly hilarious" attack on Rick Santelli's infamous rant against homeowners, and an insightful look at just how wrong CNBC got it in the days and months before the econopocalypse:

Stewart aped Santelli's newsgrabbing shouty-faced blubber from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, coyly admitting, "I have to say, I find cheap populism very arousing." And then, for eight minutes, Stewart at his arch best (with the help of the crackerjack Daily Show research team) went on an absolute tear and burned CNBC right down to the doorframes. "If only I'd followed CNBC's advice, I'd have a million dollars, provided I'd started with a hundred million dollars."

Watch it:

CNBC remained astonishingly quiet after Stewart's slam ... though maybe that was for the best. Unfortunately, Jim Cramer, the host of the ridiculous "Mad Money," just couldn't keep quiet, writing that his words had been taken out of context:

Jon Stewart, whose pointed takedown of the network CNBC last week has already become legendary, returned to the subject Monday in response to host Jim Cramer's complaint that he was taken out of context during the segment.

Stewart began by clarifying that the "Daily Show" had planned to air its epic dissection of CNBC's follies before the now infamous Rick Santelli was scheduled to appear on the program, as opposed to having done so in response to him canceling on that appearance.

In regards to Cramer, Stewart addressed the host's suggestion that the "Daily Show" had used a particular clip from his show "Mad Money" to make it look as if he had recommended buying Bear Stearns stock a week before it collapsed.

Stewart conceded the point to Cramer, saying with mockery, "I apologize, that was out of context, technically you were correct, you weren't suggesting to buy Bear Stearns." But wait: "That was something you did five days earlier, in your buy and sell segment."

Watch it:

But Jim Cramer didn't learn his lesson. Instead, he went on the TODAY show and, when asked about Stewart's critiques, complained some more:

JIM CRAMER: A comedian's attacking me! Wow! He runs a variety show!

MEREDITH VIEIRA: Okay, but you know what he's saying about you, that you advised investors to buy Bear Stearns. You said you were taken out of context.

CRAMER: On October 6th, 2008, I came on this show and did something you're never supposed to do if you have a stock show. I said people should sell everything. That was thirty-five percent ago. Whatever he says about Bear Stearns, this or that, that was a call that should have wrecked my career, and it would have if the market had gone up.

Almost as biting as his original video montage critique of CNBC, Stewart unleashed an epic attack on Cramer and the whole NBC family for using their various networks as a platform for Cramer's rebuttal.

Stewart repeatedly showed Cramer making absurd and ridiculous noises while hosting his show, "Mad Money," highlighting the remarkable similarities between the program and a wacky variety show.

Noting the awkwardness of Cramer's appearance on "The Today Show," where he watched Stewart's attack on his credibility, Stewart deadpanned that "it put a human face on my mocking, and gave me a sense of the damage I had done to a real person... It'd be like him having to watch me as his Bear Stearns advice wiped out my parents' 401(k)."

To reiterate his point, Stewart pretended to vomit as a TV clip showing plummeting Bear Stearns stock played in the split screen.

Stewart then turned to MSNBC, where he introduced Cramer's appearance on "Morning Joe" by saying "I like my news like I like my coffee, white and bitter." Stewart defended himself against Scarborough's accusation that Stewart's act consists of "he's just going to sit there and cherry-pick over the past eight years every mistake people make." Nodding his head, Stewart said, "Yes, because that is what we do."

However, what really seemed to get Stewart is what he claimed to be the shock of realizing that "if I picked on CNBC, Cramer would take it personally and get the whole NBC family involved. Don't mess with the Peacocks!"

Stewart turned to his own, rather messy, parent company by featuring characters such as Nickolodeon's "Dora the Explorer" uttering the Spanish curse word, "pendejo," and by turning to Lauren and Heidi from MTV's "The Hills" for comfort in a sketch that really just needs to be seen.

Watch It:

This media battle isn't over though, because tonight Cramer is scheduled to appear on "The Daily Show." Though if he were smart, maybe he'd pull a Santelli and "bail out." If not, well you can guess that we'll all be tuning in. (Update: Cramer will be on the Daily Show tonight, but is saying he's "nervous" because Jon Stewart is his "idol." Update 2: Apparently Cramer's Daily Show appearance should be the least of his worries: Busted: Sleaze Jim Cramer Shorting Stocks and Manipulating Markets.)

All hilarity aside though, what does it mean that Jon Stewart is doing a better job holding CNBC accountable than anybody else? James Moore has some thoughts in a post titled "And a Comic Shall Lead Them" over at the Huffington Post:

"It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously."
- Oscar Wilde

I am inclined to wonder if there is a line somewhere in the Book of Revelation that proclaims "and a comic shall lead them." Jon Stewart has set new standards for both comedy and journalism on television. Oddly, he was originally supposed to just make us laugh on Comedy Central. He's done that, quite proficiently, but Stewart has also figured out that some jokes are sad as well as too important not to tell.

But he's not supposed to be doing the job of reporters.

TV journalists used to almost guarantee successful careers if they could go into a tape file and find a public figure on camera with a quote that contradicted something they had just said into another camera. Tape archives had made it possible for hypocrisy to succeed irony as the fuel of insightful journalism. The most famous of these was probably George H. W. B**h's (not writing that name anymore, ever) order to "Read my lips, no new taxes." And then he raised them because he had no choice and his promise was held up in his face for trying to do what was right for the country while bad for him politically.

The practice of juxtaposing sound bites or quotes all but disappeared in journalism because few reporters had the time or inclination to search for context. They just wanted the here and the now and one side shouting at the other as if life were a cable program. (Yeah, I know, it almost is.) Reporters used to brag when they accomplished such coups as finding the historic contradictory quote, and their colleagues were justifiably jealous.

Jon Stewart has brought back context to journalism by making people in our drive-by culture responsible for their words and even actions. Stewart has helped Jim Cramer of CNBC make that awkward transition from silly and self-involved to just pathetic. Cramer, who famously recommended purchasing Bear-Stearns stock prior to the firm's total collapse, is reading Mein Karl and using the strategy of attacking the messenger when the message is so devastating. On the Today Show, he tried to dismiss Stewart as an "entertainer" who runs a "variety show."

Jon Stewart, of course, is both of those things but he is also a cultural icon. His program is free to deploy approaches that mainstream journalists cannot because he labors in the vineyards of comedy. If a writer for the Wall Street Journal or even the Boston Globe had put together a piece deconstructing the fallibilities of Jim Cramer's advice they would have had great problems with publication. Lawyers would have been engaged and editors would have furrowed their brows and worried about being counter-attacked or whether CNBC's advertisers would have stayed away from the paper. Sadly, no editor or reporter would have even thought up the idea of doing an analysis of Cramer's nonsensical babblings. Stewart has no such constraints. Everything must serve the laugh. Stewart has become a kind of Murrow for the new millennium.

Nonetheless, reporters at the big TV networks and the major publications have no excuse. Minute by minute people like Jim Cramer are feeding crap into our culture and public perceptions and it has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with their egos. How is it that a comedian is the first person to hold accountable these cheerleaders who are promoting a team that has no chance to win and, in some cases, isn't even in the damned game?

Analysts doing the autopsy on newspaper reporting and the corpse of mainstream journalism are constantly lamenting the fact that so many young people and an increasing number of others are getting their news from Jon Stewart and Comedy Central. Where else is there left to look for thoughtful, analytical, and insightful analysis of the issues of our day? The yuks are just a bonus. Cable news shows can proclaim "no bias, no bull" all they want but every story is framed for a purpose, which is drama and conflict. The viewers and the readers aren't there without the dramatic tension. You might as well be watching Law and Order: Special News Unit.

Unfortunately for traditional journalism, the audience increasingly realizes that much of the material presented is manufactured controversy that requires no resolution. Stewart, though, gives us the laconic and wiseass view of the day's news and nothing he says seems contrived. Strangely, his entire broadcast is a contrivance and yet it remains the most enlightening in the spectrum of TV "news." The only thing worrisome about Stewart's ascension in American culture is that his schtick and acerbic wit might be a canary in our red, white, and blue coal mine. We've got a funny guy in charge of how we think.

Can that be good?

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