Ding! Jon Stewart vs Cramer, round 2

Stewart vs Cramer—click the image to see clips over at Salon

With further apologies to Tom Tomorrow, we are now giving over our entire blog to rolling coverage of the Stewart vs Cramer debacle; an event I’m increasingly thinking could become a bit like the OJ car chase for  media in the crunch. Last night, facing the meltdown of his limited credibility, Cramer went on the Daily Show. Salon, who have the clips (click on the picture on the left to see them) pick up the story:

Cramer was constantly deferential and apologetic, at times even catching himself when he tried to offer an excuse for past behavior. And ultimately, he promised to change his ways, which include, as Gawker noted, a history of alleged attempts to manipulate the market using his position as a financial analyst both in print and on television and his connections within the media.

The clips are fascinating. Stewart won, but then, he always does. He is after all on home turf. Salon said that they thought Cramer came off especially badly. I disagree. As they note, his deference plays well. Stewart even hits a few bad notes—like when he accuses a relatively reasonable sounding Cramer of talking to him like he “is a 5 year old.” Equally, Cramer would—in my view—have more than a little right to actually defend the original cause of the spat, and push back just a touch more than he actually did.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a massive Jon Stewart fan: he is, along with Chris Morris, probably his generation’s finest satirist. And, on this issue as in most others, Stewart is more right than wrong. But….. for a show that is normally so morally nuanced, there is more than a little of the Huey Long about the Daily Show’s stalwart defence of “battling” home owners. Many home owners have been hosed by the crisis; that much is obvious, especially in the case of people who were actually mis-sold properties, rather than simply being “mis-sold” the expectation that the market would keep going up. But not all of them were victims—some were greedy, and were unwise to take out mortgages they self-evidently could not afford. (Full disclosure: I very nearly did the same thing, so I’m not saying I’m any smarter. But if I had done it when I thought about it, in 2008, I would at least have realised that the decision to buy was partly a result of my own hubris, and not entirely someone else’s fault.)

Obviously, Cramer is forced to disagree with all this, and happily hangs out to dry his (doubtless vile) CNBC Colleague. But I can’t help feeling that Jonathan Swift—the man whom Stewart, Morris, Iannucci et al venerate—were he alive today, wouldn’t have let them off the hook quite so easily. Anyway, its all riveting stuff—and, once again, a great riposte to smug people in my country who somehow think Americans can’t do comedy quite as well as we clever clogs Brits. There is nothing nearly so funny, so vital or perceptive as this in the British public sphere. And that, sad to say, is a shame.

[Update—oddly, Salon seems to have (a) changed its blog post to tone down the criticism of Kramer and (b) removed the videos. Check them out here, at the Daily Show site, or presumably you can find them somewhere on YouTube.]

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Media spat watch: Jon Stewart vs CNBC

The Stewart v Cramer showdown: click the image to view the clip

At the risk of making even truer the Tom Tomorrow prophecy of two days previously—that blogs are little more than re-publishers of mainstream media content, adding little to nothing—this really is marvelously funny. Many people in Britain might not be familiar with Jim Cramer. He is a loud, idiosyncratic financial talk show host, on the US cable news network CNBC. Having largely lost out to Fox News in the ratings war, his network decided—quite amazingly, if you think about it—to begin a strategy of trying to out-aggress, and out-hype, their Murdoch backed rival. Cramer was one of the results.

There isn’t really an equivalent in the UK I can think of—its as if he is a cross between Jeremy Clarkson, Martin Wolf and Richard Littlejohn, all with the easy, laid back temperament of Derek Draper. His programme is really actually called “Mad Money;” the joke being that he often acts in a “crazy” way when pushing his (as it turns out generally inaccurate) views on stocks and bonds. Anyway, as it happens, he is in the middle of an on-air spat with John Stewart of the Daily Show. This is rarely a good idea for anyone with half a brain, as this splendidly funny clip from the show makes abundantly clear. Stewart, as ever, mixes jibes and an actual point better than any other contemporary satirist. Click here to see it over at the Talking Points Memo [hat tip to Sean for the link, too.]

Life-imitates-satire update—Stewart’s moderately heavy-handed point in the clip about media conglomorates is rather confirmed when MSNBC, a relation of CNBC, is asked not to cover the spat. As POPURLS puts it: “this is why the MSM should be broken up.”

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