Jon Stewart interviews Jim Cramer

[Darth Wong]

I was really quite disgusted at how Cramer tried to agree with Stewart, make those little unfunny jokes, try to play nicey-nice. Just grow a spine and own up.

He won't "own up" because he's one of the bad guys. It's like expecting a criminal to confess on the witness stand. It ain't gonna happen.

Cramer made a lot of money doing precisely the kind of things which have brought the economy to the brink of ruin. He is not the kind of person who will point out the true agents responsible for this mess. The same applies to most of the people working in so-called "financial news": they are drawn from the ranks of the people most responsible for what's wrong today. Obviously, they will have a very skewed idea of who's at fault and what should be done, and they will have great difficulty honestly pointing out the problems.

Just look at how Cramer kept pointing out how he was buddy-buddy with a lot of these CEOs and he was upset that they lied to him. THAT IS THE PROBLEM right there: the people who are supposedly reporting on these clowns are their long-time friends and associates. It would be like asking Chelsea Clinton to do a hard-hitting journalistic interview with Bill Clinton; it's completely ridiculous.

[Ender]

I was really quite disgusted at how Cramer kept trying to agree with Stewart, made those little unfunny jokes, tried to play nicey-nice. Just grow a spine and own up.

The guy is on fucking tape talking about manipulating the market as a hedge fund manager and won't own up to that, you think he is going to confess on TDS?

[Kodiak]

So our most effective media watchdogs when it comes to financial shenanigans are a comedian and soft core porn. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

I must've missed that part. Care to elaborate? I didn't see that one.

[Edi]

Previous page, Ender's links. The guys who wrote that article and the one linked from the end of it write Playboy blogs for a living most of the time.

[MarshalFoch]

Stewart really can nail people on his show. I'm not sure if it is because he doesn't really dance around questions the way some interviewers do, or he just has his guests at a massive disadvantage because they don't expect to get such questions on a comedy show. I remember him tearing apart Bernie Goldberg, the awkward interview with Musharaff, or the somewhat-jumbled interview with Tony Blair. I'm surprised big names still go on his show as often as they do.

[Slacker]

Well, think about it-would you want a reputation as a guy who's afraid to go on a program where the host, quote, 'wants to go back to making fart noises and funny faces'?

[Traveller]

I wonder if the executives at CNBC are quietly sharpening their axes as we speak.....

Some Jon Stewart Quotes
Link http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jon_Stewart

Isn’t the Dow Jones Industrial Average just a short twitch numerical representation of a bunch of guesses about other people’s assumptions about the financial well-being of an arbitrarily chosen group of 30 out of TENS OF THOUSANDS OF POSSIBLE COMPANIES? NO! YOU’RE WRONG! It is a real-time cause-and-effect precision barometer of how the President is doing! It’s been that way for years!
March 4, 2009

Brillant

[Crown]

That was brutal. Jon nailed it.

[Phantasee]

Nope. Santelli's rant and such has nothing to do with all that. Santelli's rant was because he was paid to make that rant. A couple of bloggers who usually work for Playboy investigated. Follow the money and connections, and GOP backers have been laying the ground work for a fake grass roots opposition for months. This and the rest of the manufactured outrage are about as real as the bodies of the girls these guys usually write for.

What the fucking shit. That's one of the biggest astroturf jobs I've ever seen.

[Siege]

I couldn't BELIEVE how incredibly serious and professional the interview came-off.

I think this is one of Stewart's best tricks. He plays up the 'I'm just a comedian!' angle most of the time, so when every once in a while he goes into deadpan serious mode the interviewee doesn't know what the hell is going on until it's too late. People seem to underestimate him a lot, which perhaps isn't all that strange considering the professional embarrassment that passes for American journalism.

...and he's not even a real journalist.

From what I've seen I feel he and the people working for his show are far closer to "real journalists" than whatever passes for a "real journalist" at CNN or FOX. Sure they tend to go about it in a joking manner, but the way they regularly dig through archive material to find incriminating footage and show powers that be to be the hypocrites they are... It's hard to call it anything else, frankly.

[Chris OFarrell]

Ouch.

That was...just...OUCH.

Its a pointed comment on the state of journalism in the US -and the rest of the Western World for that matter- that a self confessed comedy show is the only place where the tough questions are being asked.

Its very easy to underestimate Stewart, but he and his people DO know what they are doing and he CAN be utterly ruthless when he wants to be. He's smart and because he IS officially a comedian, he has the power to actually tell it like it is and get in peoples faces without the consequences a real 'news show' these days might have.

The smart 'contraversal' people who go on his show have long, IMO, gone with the expectation that Stewart might well pounce and go hard core. This guy clearly didn't have the first clue and blithely walked into the jaws of a horrific trap.

There is a HUGE amount of rage in the US and rest of the world starting to boil, from the 'average joes' at the high fliers on Wall Street who are increasingly coming across as believing -and showing- they are utterly above the law, accountable to no-one...and having fucked the economy so badly we might be heading into the wost economic disaster EVER, are happily smiling in their huge mansions and saying 'well dems the breaks eh?', as many other people watch their wealth, jobs, houses and everything just vanish in a puff of smoke....

And I think Stewart is probably going to double down on this and become the de-facto 'lynch mob' leader.

[Count Chocula]

And I think Stewart is probably going to double down on this and become the de-facto 'lynch mob' leader.

No way dude, the rabble-rousing demagogue is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, because he did a better job solving the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) equation than McSame.

Unless...way out there idea...a comedian ends up riling the masses against the reigning rabble-rouser! Now that could be interesting.

[Thanas]

And I think Stewart is probably going to double down on this and become the de-facto 'lynch mob' leader.

No way dude, the rabble-rousing demagogue is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, because he did a better job solving the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) equation than McSame.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

[Count Chocula]

Tongue In Cheek, or Tango India Charlie. A successful public figure is very good at stirring up emotions. Not entirely a political crack, as evangelists and Al Sharpton also possess this ability, as did Churchill, Roosevelt, Reagan et al.

[Mr Bean]

Ummm yeah Count Chocula no...
Besides I read 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as the MSNBC show of the same name which FYI is mostly shit but they get Cenk and give the guy more exposure so it's not all bad.

OAN, Stewart did an excellent job, and it was rather funny how the entire news media covered everything up until the actual "Face off" and then dead silence that followed just a masterful drubbing.

[Ender]

OAN, Stewart did an excellent job, and it was rather funny how the entire news media covered everything up until the actual "Face off" and then dead silence that followed just a masterful drubbing.

It's the lead story on CNN.com, and was all over the radio this morning. I'd hardly call that "dead silence"

[Mr Bean]

It's the lead story on CNN.com, and was all over the radio this morning. I'd hardly call that "dead silence"

Try CNBC.... they reported on Stewarts previous statements but the meeting? Yeah no where to be seen.

[Patrick Degan]

I was really quite disgusted at how Cramer kept trying to agree with Stewart, made those little unfunny jokes, tried to play nicey-nice. Just grow a spine and own up.

Watching Cramer squirm made it all worthwhile.

[Patrick Degan]

And I think Stewart is probably going to double down on this and become the de-facto 'lynch mob' leader.

No way dude, the rabble-rousing demagogue is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, because he did a better job solving the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) equation than McSame.

The word for that, of course, is bullshit.

Obama beat McCain by appealing to peoples' better instincts, intelligence, and projecting the confidence that this country's problems are not unsolvable. McCain, by contrast, was a pathetic tool who couldn't muzzle Yukon Barbie when she was making the appeals to Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and not-so-subtle racism. That is, when she simply wasn't coming off as a right little airhead who was giving Miss Congeniality answers to even the most basic questions posed to her.

[Samuel]

You watching a different election than me CC?

[Phantasee]

http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-da ... iew-uncut/

A link for the Canadians in the crowd. I actually didn't see the uncut version until just now, I ended up watching the segments that actually aired. I have to say, there are a few points that did get cut that would have been nice to see aired.

[Uraniun235]

This is a guess, but I'm inclined to suspect that Cramer was ordered to go grovel before Stewart (since this all started after a CNBC shill bailed on the Daily Show) so that the Daily Show would stop yelling that the emperor has no clothes.

[Lonestar]

It's the lead story on CNN.com, and was all over the radio this morning. I'd hardly call that "dead silence"

Try CNBC.... they reported on Stewarts previous statements but the meeting? Yeah no where to be seen.

The NYT was calling Stewart the "Democrat Senator from Comedy Central" and compared it, in a condescending tone, to a "CEO being called before a senate Subcommittee and not being permitted a rebuttal while being chastised."


Nice.

[Pulp Hero]

Except that he was allowed to respond, he just had nothing to say.

I wonder if the Daily Show will stay on the theme of having CNBC be more responsible or if they will drop it now.

[Johonebesus]

Does anyone else ever get the sense that Stewart is pretty frustrated that his show does a better job of calling bullshit than most mainstream journalists? It sort of seems like there is some bitterness under all of his "I'm just a comedian; this is a fake news show" protestations.