Comments on FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Stewart Destroys CNBC, Cramer, Disses “Doucheborou...

@Jeff-Jesus dude, everything does not have to do w...

2009-03-26T13:37:00.000-04:00

@Jeff-

Jesus dude, everything does not have to do with Obama. Your guy lost and our guy won. Get over it. Now you know what we felt for the 8 years previous.

We get it - you don't like Obama. Anything else to offer then?

A quick comment: Because of copyright law and enfo...

2009-03-18T03:09:00.000-04:00

A quick comment: Because of copyright law and enforcement of DRM, that YouTube clip doesn't air outside the United States. Here in Canada, we are givena link to click to that goes to The Comedy Network.

I didn't bother viewing it because I wanted to stay in the site. While it's an understandable enforcement, it's annoying as hell because non-US readers aren't in on the fun. Which leads to a less than optimal blog-reading experience.

看房子,買房子,建商自售,自售,台北新成屋,台北豪宅,新成屋,豪宅,美髮儀器,美髮,儀器,髮型,EM...

2009-03-17T22:48:00.000-04:00

@jon:I only read the wiki, not the book. Postman s...

2009-03-17T17:21:00.000-04:00

@jon:

I only read the wiki, not the book. Postman seems to have an initial point I do agree with, but if his comments near the bottom are any guide, it sounds like he stretches it too far: I don't think a musical education is prerequisite to appreciation of Chopin or Mozart; either they are good are they are not.

Now it is entirely possible they were good at the time, as part of a fad, like sappy 1940's music or disco. Just because something is popular today doesn't mean people will like it forever, and the same is true for Chopin. The guy was an entertainer and styles get stale, particularly when something new is invented.

In TV, movie and novels, old shows and books feel stilted and ridiculous and full of transparent artifice, and it isn't because we just aren't "educated" enough to appreciate the wonderful art inherent in "Leave it to Beaver" or "Gilligan's Island."

It is because our expectations in the quality of writing, plot, and adherence to some semblance of reality produces new work that makes the old works obsolete and no longer entertaining.

Thanks for the link, Postman has at least an interesting premise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_...

2009-03-17T16:01:00.000-04:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

HtoH said'Jon Stewart absolutely has the right to ...

2009-03-16T14:35:00.000-04:00

HtoH said
'Jon Stewart absolutely has the right to ask questions, like he did last night. The issue is that when he does that, he is no longer a comedian, but rather a pundit (not, I should note, a journalist). When he does that we should look at his statements critically. How many Daily-Show style clip hit-jobs could one prepare on Stewart?'
-------------------------

I know I am late to the party, but have had a busy weekend and I wanted to comment on this.

Noone is suggesting that criticisms of Stewart are not valid. But the job Stewart did on CNBC and Cramer was so stinging partly because it was actually valid. CNBC and the whole financial news industry has been serving two masters in some ways. The ordinary citizen (us!) and the finance industry, and that the service it has been providing is in fact paradoxical.

I think Jon Stewart did an amazing job with that i...

2009-03-15T13:43:00.000-04:00

I think Jon Stewart did an amazing job with that interview, cutting to the points with thinly veiled emotion showing through at times, like when he spoke of his mother having lost so much. Oosaka san also quoted many of the other important moments...I appreciate Stewart calling out the arrogance of someone like Cramer. We are in this economic mess because of many, many greedy, arrogant people...just because so many are guilty doesn't mean we can't call them out one by one. Keep 'em coming.
Thank you Nick for the Princess Bride quote...
And Melody, I have implemented my own "ignore" button by immediately scrolling past the garbage left behind by the likes of Peter Kent and other blowhards...I'd love to have a way to not have to work so hard to take out that garbage, though.

Cramer has his good points and his bad points, but...

2009-03-14T22:37:00.000-04:00

Cramer has his good points and his bad points, but he wouldn't have borne the brunt of this if he had just SHUT UP after the first piece ran instead of trying to say that he never touted Bear Stearns just before its fall. It is unfortunate that Cramer has become the personal face of the farce that is the financial advice shows, but Stewart is right: these people have a chance to do some real reporting, and instead they just fall on their faces to kiss CEO ass. They take their word for it and don't demand documentation to back up their rosy claims. See, e.g., the first clip in which Maria Bartiromo airheadedly says "it's amAAAzing, all these CEOs come on here and say the same thing..."

Jersey, you my friend are an idiot.I never said St...

2009-03-14T21:49:00.000-04:00

Jersey, you my friend are an idiot.

I never said Stewart said Cramer's show was called Fast Money. The author of this very column on 538.com said his show was Fast Money.

Reading comprehension much?

CNBC ratings down:http://www.portfolio.com/views/b...

2009-03-14T07:14:00.000-04:00

CNBC ratings down:
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/mixed-media/2009/03/13/the-stewart-dip-ratings-down-for-cnbc-cramer

MikeNo problem. I wasn't thinking you were saying ...

2009-03-14T03:56:00.000-04:00

Mike

No problem. I wasn't thinking you were saying anything other than what you said. Sorry if I didn't make it clearer.

I was just fantasizing about a way to get more sides of a story without waiting for the usual outlets to broaden their coverage or spending all day combing through websites.

Stewart's got some nerve taking Cramer to task for...

2009-03-14T03:48:00.000-04:00

Stewart's got some nerve taking Cramer to task for sucking up to CEO's, after his own sycophantic interview of Tony Blair. His show is supposed to be satirical, but it was meat and drink for a politician as adept as Blair. He had a real opportunity to take one of the prime architects of the war to task, and he allowed himself to be charmed as much as any power-worshipping journo out there.

Hu Chi,Please pardon the mashing of your name I di...

2009-03-14T03:18:00.000-04:00

Hu Chi,

Please pardon the mashing of your name I did on that previous post. It was totally unintentional, and I'm not at all sure how it happened.

Mike

Hu Chim,Please reread my post. I was NOT calling ...

2009-03-14T03:15:00.000-04:00

Hu Chim,

Please reread my post. I was NOT calling for some script to find certain news items on the net.

I was presenting a scenario.

Almost everyone states 'there are two sides to a story' and the major media tries to present a one-on-one 'dialogue'. It can be false, as there might be two, three, four, five, or a thousand different views on a single subject.

An example - Christianity.

You've got the Roman Catholic (Vatican) viewpoint, then you've got the opinion of the Italians claiming to be Catholic, the French, the Americans (several different viewpoints), the South Americans (several different viewpoints), etc., etc.

You've got the Eastern Orthodox viewpoint, but within that there are the different national Orthodoxies (Greek, Serbian, Russian, Bulgarian, etc., etc.)

You've got the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt - closer to the Eastern Orthodox Church than the Vatican, but still different.

You've got the Protestant viewpoint, but that is the most fractured, from Lutheran (multimple synods), Episcopalian (high and low), Anglican, etc., at one end of the spectrum, to the Society of Friends (Quakers), Mennonites, Amish, Church of the Brethren, etc., at another end of the spectrum. Lest we forget, there are also several 'flavors' of Baptists.

And then there are some 'not easy to classify' groupings, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and their offshoots, the Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Scientists) the 'non-denominational' churches, and the 'unaffiliated' congregations.

There are also people who believe in Christianity, but don't believe in a church or church hierarchy.

So which TWO people would represent opposing viewpoints on Christianity? Or which ONE to represent Christianity vs. some other religion, such as Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc.?

Sometimes there are two, and only two, viewpoints on a subject, although that is much more rare than most people consciously realize. Many times there can be more than two viewpoints, and for a 'news' organization to present something with only two viewpoints EVERY G.D. TIME is dishonest.

Holy shit, thanks to the dumbassery of SA, SMK, PK...

2009-03-14T02:59:00.000-04:00

Holy shit, thanks to the dumbassery of SA, SMK, PK, and the rest of the numbnuts on the right that infect this site, the comments portion is 100% worthless.

Before the election, it was solid despite the dumbshits like PK and MR(who SA sounds exactly like, right down to the mindless attacks and challenges to Nate). What else could you call people that think that ignoring their posts is censorship?

I do sometimes wonder how they have time to spew their idiocy. here when they clearly spend most of their time fapping to the Free Republic and Coulter's bulge.

I think it is clear that the right wing numbnuts who post here are the same reason the Republican Party is dead.

Since there are no intelligent conservative on this site, with maybe one exception(A day or two ago Dale was posting and seemed worthwhile), this site is really nothing more than an echo chamber, with the occassional troll feeding fiesta(which I have been guilty of), although at least that is more stimulating than reading the constant stream of bullshit from the likes of PK and SA.

My point is, it is past time to just ignore these fuckwits. Use the Greasemonkey script if you have to, but please no more feeding the slugs.

Please?

Oosaka sanExactly. The NYT and other "serious" out...

2009-03-14T01:56:00.000-04:00

Oosaka san

Exactly. The NYT and other "serious" outlets can only deal with this story obliquely. If they embraced the issue seriously they'd be right there with Cramer and CNBC, looking like cheerleaders for the big lie.

The Shakespearean fool, as in King Lear, is the appropriate analog to Stewart. It's about telling truth to power, a tough thing to do when you're selling ads.

Statler N Waldorf said...smk, Bullshit.I totall...

2009-03-14T01:52:00.000-04:00

Statler N Waldorf said...
smk,

Bullshit.

I totally agree with Statler on this.

BeanoCook said, "Cramer is not host of FAST MONEY....

2009-03-14T01:42:00.000-04:00

BeanoCook said, "Cramer is not host of FAST MONEY. That is another show, Cramer is host of MAD MONEY. Get your facts right losers."

But Jon Stewart didn't say Fast Money was Jim Cramer's show, Stewart was refering to another program on CNBC:

CRAMER: Well, I think that your goal should always be to try to expose the fact that there is no easy money. I wish I had found Madoff...

STEWART: But there are literally shows called Fast Money.

CRAMER: I think that people… [Audience laughs] There’s a market for it and you give it to them.

STEWART: There’s a market for cocaine and hookers. What is the responsibility of the people who cover Wall Street? Who are you responsible to? The people with the 401ks and the pensions and the general public, or the Wall Street traders, and by the way this casts an aspersion on all of Wall Street when I know that’s unfair as well...

http://www.vancouversun.com/Business/Transcript+Daily+show+interview+betwen+Stewart+Cramer/1386933/story.html

Why does discussions about criticism always have t...

2009-03-14T00:59:00.000-04:00

Why does discussions about criticism always have to devolve into a debate as to whether criticism is legitimate ? Of course it's legitimate, now let's address the substance of the criticism.

smk : But challenging someone or something in a public venue also entitles others to disagree with you. What bothers me is this attitude that the NYT has no right to question the substance of what JS says.

NYT has the right to question the substance of what JS says. It doesn't make that questioning right or clever or useful, but they can do it. But that's irrelevant because they didn't do it here. The whole article is a simple description of the whole thing, with the cute twist that it neglects to mention Stewart's most important points. Here are the takeaways I got from the interview :
1) it's not about Cramer. Quotable line : JS: But this isn’t, as Carly Simon would say, this song ain’t about you.
2) it's about CNBC being a cheerleader for Wall Street malfeasance even though they all know what's going on (see the 2006 clips of Cramer explaining and encouraging people to do stuff I don't really understand but I hear might be illegal. Quotable line : JS: I want the Jim Cramer on CNBC to protect me from that[2006] Jim Cramer. )
and
3) it's also about CNBC substituting interviews with CEOs for investigative reporting, and then throwing their hands in the air when it turns out the CEOs where, shocker, lying to them. Quotable line : JS: Yeah. I’m under the assumption, and maybe this is purely ridiculous, but I’m under the assumption that you don’t just take their word for it at face value. That you actually then go around and try and figure it out.

And yet the New York Times article describes the whole thing as being about Cramer, going on at length about the buildup and the Bear Stearns clips, Cramer going on Martha Stewart and so on. The only reference to point 2 is at the third-to-last paragraph : "Once he had Mr. Cramer at his desk, Mr. Stewart showed fresh and even more embarrassing clips from a 2006 interview with the Web site Mr. Cramer founded, TheStreet.com, in which he too candidly explained how hedge fund market manipulation really works.". And that's it. It then goes on to talk about the theatricality of Mad Money. It doesn't even describe Stewart's reaction to the 2006 clip, as it does for instance with the clip of Cramer on Martha Stewart.

And point 3 ? The article doesn't even hint at it, which is understandable because although Stewart is talking about CNBC, the point applies to the whole mainstream media and they know it.

Instead, they spend the whole article casting Stewart as a humorless grandstanding prosecutor while failing to even mention his most important points, instead going on about the trivialities.
Look at the quotes I've given. They're funny, they illustrate the point well and the last one in particular I'm seeing being quoted all over the place in comments, it speaks to people. Yet in the NYT article they preferred to quote his puns and line about cocaine and hookers.

Now who's the comedian ?

M in MAgreed as to the multiplicity of points of v...

2009-03-14T00:58:00.000-04:00

M in M

Agreed as to the multiplicity of points of view that don't show up in the media. The solutions to improve the situation aren't obvious either.

If finding out what's going on is your goal, and you have enough time, it's probably somewhere on the web. If you don't have the time, you have to trust somebody, and that's the rub.

As the web progresses, you should be able to specify how much time you want to spend finding out about your chosen subjects, and a self-calibrated search engine would put it together for you with links you could follow if something interested you further. For all I know I'm describing something that's there already, but I haven't seen it.

Some mix of text, audio and video would be put together from sources I've either chosen or that the search algorithm thinks I might like. The drawback, of course, is that unless I chose it, opinions or information that I might not like would be off my radar. So I could remain happily ignorant if I wasn't careful.

You could trade search algorithms with your friends.

Juris said...I'm not asking for "balance" in the w...

2009-03-13T23:41:00.000-04:00

Juris said...
I'm not asking for "balance" in the way that major news programs operationalize that term into a "he says-but he says" format without really looking for truth.

Juris brings up a good point. To some in the 'news business', there are two sides to any argument. There CAN be many sides, though.

Think economics - If the question is what is the ideal economic system, a news organization could have (knowing they're dead, but let's pretend) Lenin arguing with Hitler, or Stalin arguing with Trotsky, on the ideal economic system. All would present one viewpoint versus an almost polar opposite viewpoint, but would the viewpoints be representative of ALL economic systems?

cfp said...Anyone else notice the Bank of America ...

2009-03-13T23:29:00.000-04:00

cfp said...
Anyone else notice the Bank of America commercial last night? If the dissonance of that weren't something we're so accustomed to, it'd almost seem like a satire unto itself.

Early in CBS's 60 Minutes history (late 60s/early 70s) they had a report on how GM workers, when they got behind on the assembly line, would just skip putting the part on a car, and go to the next car. Immediately after that segment, a Chrysler commercial aired, announcing the beginning of Chrysler's guarantee, the first guarantee of any American auto maker. Sales of Chrysler Motor Corp vehicles immediately showed an increase, and for some time, GM products dipped in sales.

It was coincidence for the timing of the commercial - you can be sure that Chrysler didn't know how serendipitous the timing would be, but it worked to Chrysler's benefit in an unbelievable manner. Same with the BoA ad, only in reverse - they bought the ad at some time, not knowing the specific topic of discussion of the particular program the ad would appear on.

If we're talking about the culture that permitted deregulated and insane risktaking, overconsumption, and all that, I don't think either Cramer or Stewart is particularly responsible, but they are both more complicit than most. Stewart's habit of shrugging it all off, mugging for the camera, and then occasionally allowing himself some on-air righteousness is increasingly sad to me and less and less persuasive each time he does it. In some ways it's just a savvier version of what Cramer does on his show. It seems to me that different people watch these shows for the same reasons.

The difference - Cramer doesn't know if he is a commentator about Wall Street or a reporter of the news of Wall Street. Stewart knows and readily admits (even brags) that he is a commentator about society, including economics, politics, entertainment, sports, etc., etc. He makes sure people KNOW he is not reporting, but commentating on society in all it's nooks and crannies it is in.

MelodyI think Dwight has worked out your solution....

2009-03-13T23:07:00.000-04:00

Melody

I think Dwight has worked out your solution. It's a script you can download to identify commenters you'd like to skip. If he beat me to it, ignore this.

Tony

I agree about the shallowness of "real"news as opposed to "soft" news. Half the time, Stewart is about as real as it gets. The need to make money via advertising, plus the need to pitch news to the lowest common denominator, makes for pretty insipid stuff.

Then an oil company ad comes on in the middle of the "news" telling us how badly we need to have more oil in the future, how much they care about the environment, and how everything they're saying is just good ol' common sense.

So to expect there to be some version of the "news" that can be watched as though it's a faithful reporting of fact is naive. PBS does as good a job as anyone, but vast conceptual domains are still often overlooked (and I don't mean conservative domains).

Times are strange and complex and no individual has a total grasp on present day reality. My attitude towards news is like Mark Twain's on food. He said something to the effect that the way to be happy is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out in your stomach. Substitute "informed" for "happy", "watch, listen, and read" for "eat", "information" for "food", and "mind" for "stomach".

Folks who want their news interpreted and dispensed to them in ready-to-digest bite-sized pieces aren't likely to be satisfied unless they drink the Kool-Aid and just go with some hard-wired religious agenda. Then they can be comfortably wrong until they die--which leads me to my final Twain phrase: as surprised as a Presbyterian in hell.

I think it is time to require registration and hav...

2009-03-13T21:23:00.000-04:00

I think it is time to require registration and have an "ignore user" tab. I enjoy this site but the trolls - most of whom are imbeciles that wouldn't know a critical thought if it bit them on the ass - that spout their fallacious and ill-researched views are really ruining it. I've never posted before but I'm really sick of this site being ruined for me when I have to sort through the troll-scape. Is this possible? Can you make it so that we can ignore these willfully ignorant bigots?

I enjoy intelligent discourse as much, if not more, than the next person but the trolls do not usually contribute to a spirited, intelligent, and lively debate. An exchange of ideas has to be just that: an exchange where thoughts flow both ways. There is no point in continuing a conversation with someone who figuratively sticks their fingers in their ears and screams whenever you attempt to engage them in rational interchanges – and I’ve seen four year olds who are more receptive than the trolls on this site.

I know that banning them is not palatable or morally correct, and I am not advocating a ban, but giving those of us who can think at an adult level the ability to ignore them is not the same as silencing them.

@ hosertohoosierIncidentally Jim Lehr News Hour do...

2009-03-13T20:52:00.000-04:00

@ hosertohoosier

Incidentally Jim Lehr News Hour doesn't exactly kick establishment ass and take names, either. But at least they largely avoid the "sound bite" syndrome.