Mad Money Vs. Mad Funny

Jon Stewart and his writing team are effing geniuses. It's such a sorry state of affairs when a comedy show has better journalistic (albeit faux-journalistic) skills than the mass media.

Does Jim Cramer have any self-awareness at all? I'd like to believe he's in on the joke and is playing along with it, but that's getting more and more unlikely.
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The fundamental problem with CNBC is that they portray their coverage as analysis, when it's really nothing more than cheerleading. Over the past several years, anyone who has critical things to say is beaten down and ignored (i.e. Peter Schiff). My main experience watching CNBC was back in 2000. At the time the NASDAQ was above 5000 and the cheerleaders were convinced it was on it's way to surpassing the DOW. 9 years later, the NASDAQ is down 75% from it's high, and the talking heads are still playing the same game. Anyone taking investment advice from CNBC gets what they deserve.

I agree with archstanton68 (and not just because we seem to have been born in the same year). CNBC suffers from a strategic flaw in that the network believes it can cover the financial world with the same off-the-cuff. freewheeling, personality-driven style as its news-network brethren down the dial. But people necessarily engage in the world of finance on a different level than the worlds of politics or world affairs -- CNBC viewers have a real-world stake in the opinions cast on those shows that just isn't present for, say, Olbermann or O'Reilly.
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Stewart's own recent coverage (I've been enjoying his discomfort at employing populist techniques to derail a populist windbag) is lifting the curtain at CNBC to suggest exactly how dangerous it can be to take these ... entertainers ... seriously. That said, it's as good an example as any to reaffirm that The Daily Show's reputation as a guerilla news organization is poorly applied: what Stewart and Co. are doing is illuminating, to be sure, and there's a brave truth to it that is rarely found in conventional media outlets. But it's not journalism in the strictest sense of the word (taking quotes out of context to prove a larger point, for example), as Stewart himself has argued many times. It's more like the difference between a vigilante and a police officer. But a really funny vigilante.
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I don't think he's upset about being called a bad stock-picker. It's that he's tried to dodge all responsibility by pushing the idea that he's been warning people all along. He thought his big rant awhile back would be him on the outside-looking-in side of the meltdown.
He's just upset at having his narrative derailed by, y'know, people being reminded about the things that he said and did.

I think you're missing the huge point that led to Santelli canceling and Cramer being so upset: trust. Stewart laid out a devastating critique about the network and makes a case against trusting them; he made a similar case about Crossfire simply being bad for the country and the show folded. This is serious. And I think it feeds a larger problem that the MSM at large has and is not willing to recognize or fix: the credibility issues. This was the downfall of Bush. It's why the average person does not trust the Republican party about the economy. It's why Americans, unlike the MSM and cable chatter, are sticking with Obama despite the fact that he hasn't fixed our economy in 50 days.

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There has been a lot written about cable blather and the dilution of quality in a 24/7 news environment. I'd say that doesn't recognize the absence of real reporting and cogent news. The cables chatter about Obama doing to much, NBC Nightly News looks at the question that night, the newspapers do analysis. The stimulus bill is a prime example: I read at ThinkProgress that the fact that the majority of economists thought the stimulus was too small did not even get covered! There has been an unwillingness for reporters to recognize that a lot of covergate has become stenography. The Republicans flooded the cable airwaves pushing their point; no one thought to ask them why they wanted a smaller stimulus when the majority of economists (Republican and Democratic) said the one the president himself proposed was too small. Instead the he said/she said political fight paradigm took over.

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Fake news has become better than real news in a lot of ways because (1) since there is no access facts are relied on and (2) since this is fact based satire there is a trust DESPITE the clear ideological tilt of the content-provider. That is completely missing from non-partisan news organizations that IMO do not question and cover the issues of the day but are led by spin missions and cable chatter and the current ideological food fight: hello Limbaugh v. the President.

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It's sad and pitiful and I hope you'll consider it when you do your write up.

I also forget to include that a lot of the newspaper "analysis" is just punditry on the page; and since punditry is wrong most of the time and breaking news goes online or on cable there is a greater reason why people won't pay for papers beyond the fact that it's free online.

You can get CNN free too w/your cable package; why pay for breaking news service at the papers too then? Especially since blogs cover the same analysis/punditry.

let's hope Stewart reads this and asks Cramer about it:

"-On falsely creating the impression a stock is down (what he calls "fomenting"): "You can't foment. That's a violation... But you do it anyway because the SEC doesn't understand it." He adds, "When you have six days and your company may be in doubt because you are down, I think it is really important to foment." - Jim Cramer

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/11/jim-cramer-shorting-stock_n_173824.html

The best result of all this is that future rants about "losers" from CNBC may not be so heavily promoted within the NBC family. With Stewart's takedown of the CNBC's losers, the pot looks far blacker and much more complicit than the kettle.

P.S. This comment will fall on deaf ears, I know. But this is most difficult commenting section to read on the blogosphere. Really very irritating and not reader friendly at all.
*wastes times complaining*

Thanks James, you are reader friendly. I enjoy your posts.

WOW. The author is commenting on a feud and then taking a side? Really? Seems odd to me.
Additionally, anyone who watches the daily show and looks for Mr. Stewart's clevely hidden agenda is a nut. The show is funny, yes. John Stewart is a Clown, he's supposed to be funny. He takes himself too seriously, ironic I know; but he does. So how can we attack the stock picker for picker bad stocks but not the comedian (and his viewers) for somehow thinking he's allowed to make serious points? To be fair, neither man can control himself, they are both egomaniacs (as all in show business) and they both NEED to be right.

[...] hope you have been entertained by this Jon Stewart vs. Jim Cramer feud, because I have thoroughly enjoyed it so far. Cramer will be on The Daily Show Thursday, which [...]

Why is he our only voice of reason? why is he only one that makes sense these days? please give him a little help, with so much incompetence i am afraid him and his staff may not get enough sleep. Can someone please help him out? I love his show and his brilliant staff (we don't have nearly enough great research on regular news - not even close), but why are they the only people saying things we are all thinking? him being the only voice of sanity? to show us how screwed up our media/government is? shouldn't that really be the job of the media and the government? to tell us what is wrong with our system and to change it, respectively?

I love how all the other media ALWAYS comments, ops, blog about it after the fact It's like "okay, it's out in the open, we can talk about it now, we never liked CNBC." Before this, there hasn't been too many people complaining about CNBC, then suddenly when it hits, "he's absolutely right." "must see" "did what nobody can" blah blah blah. and NOW everyone is writing op-ed, blogs, on air comments, etc. where were you before this? where was the outrage? why is he our only voice of reason? really god needs a day off too (well cramer if you're CNBC watcher)

But haven't we had this discussion before, with another daily show posse, Stephen Colbert when he was invited to the White House Press correspondent dinner? He said what the press didn't/couldn't say the last 4 years, to Bush's face no less. And before that it was Jon Stewart Cross Fire CNN Tucker Carlson fight.

I for one is glad Jon Stewart and his guys are turd mining, at least someone is. But let's give him some help here, please.

[...] when it can put famous faces on them. I would have said that the fixation on Jon-vs.-Jim (in which I have participated) makes the issue about a side issue, namely, whether Cramer's financial advice can be relied on, [...]

[...] are the perils of a biweekly column, and Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer have done me the courtesy of keeping the network in the headlines for [...]

@archstanton68: I don't want Stewart to ask Cramer about the crimes he's committed when he was a Hedge Fun manager. I want 60 Minutes to do that piece, or better yet, have the SEC do an investigation and indict him. It's criminals like Cramer who have brought massive amounts of fraud into the markets to the point where people have lost all trust and faith in them. This kind of damage needs to be purged from the system. The frauds and cheats like Madoff and Stanford, plus countless others need to be prosecuted.