QOTD, Steve Benen: Watching the evisceration, I couldn't help but wonder why it takes a comedian on Comedy Central to do the kind of interview the non-fake news shows ought to be doing. When the media establishment marvels at Jon Stewart's popularity, they tend to think it's his humor. It's not. It's because he calls "bullsh*t" when most major media players won't. He did so last night, and it made for important viewing.
QOTD, Sudbay: Jon Stewart asks questions that no one else asked. The business media was to the economic crisis as the DC media was to the Iraq War and other Bush lies. He has a line to Cramer "you all know what's going on." That line captures the essence of much of the corporate media.
QOTD, Sullivan: There is a cloying familiarity among many cable show hosts and television personalities. We all have to get along, even though some of us may believe that others of us are very much part of the problem, rather than the solution. And what Stewart has done is rip off that little band-aid of faux solidarity for a modicum of ethical and moral accountability.
UPDATE: Swampland commenter Paul Dirks:
From the scold :Today, everyone -- including media stars everywhere -- is going to take Stewart's side and all join in the easy mockery of Cramer and CNBC, as though what Stewart is saying is so self-evidently true and what Cramer/CNBC did is so self-evidently wrong. But there's absolutely nothing about Cramer that is unique when it comes to our press corps. The behavior that Jon Stewart so expertly dissected last night is exactly what our press corps in general does -- and, when compelled to do so, they say so and are proud of it.
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Look! An earmark!!!!!!
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Nothing to see here folks.........
Jay Ackroyd Journalism: So we're at the point that a comedian has to take a break from fart sounds and funny faces to dish out some journalism. Because otherwise, there isn't any? Journalism, that is.
- Benen: YOU WILL LIKE HIM WHEN HE'S ANGRY....
In 2004, Jon Stewart appeared on CNN's "Crossfire," and explained that the show was "hurting America." He wasn't kidding. The brutal appearance exposed the show as something of a farce; CNN's executives ended up agreeing with Stewart; and three months later, CNN announced that "Crossfire" was finished.
With that history in mind, CNBC should feel awfully nervous right now.
After a week of back and forth, Stewart had Jim Cramer on "The Daily Show" last night and not only destroyed the "Mad Money" host, but more importantly, exposed CNBC as an embarrassment. By the time the brutal interview was over, one thing was clear: the network has no clothes.
If you watched the aired program last night, you missed most of the discussion, which had to be edited down. Fortunately, the whole thing, start to finish, is online. Here's Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. (Note: some of the language is not safe for work -- profanities were not "bleeped.")
Cramer seemed anxious to avoid getting skewered. Before the interview, he was lowering the temperature, making self-deprecating jokes, and talking about how he patterned his own show after Stewart's. On the "Daily Show," Cramer continued to try being nice, telling Stewart what a "fan" he is. He even agreed with Stewart on the whole Santelli rant.
But that didn't stop Stewart from saying what needed to be said. It was like watching a trained prosecutor destroy a fumbling defendant on the stand.
Jon Stewart hammered Jim Cramer and his network, CNBC, in their anticipated face-off on "The Daily Show," repeatedly chastising the "Mad Money" host for putting entertainment above journalism.
"I understand that you want to make finance entertaining, but it's not a ... game," Stewart told Cramer, adding in an expletive during the show's Thursday taping. The episode was scheduled to air at 11 p.m. EDT on Comedy Central.
Cramer apparently went on the show to make nice and end the "feud." Stewart apparently had him on the show to expose how ridiculous and irresponsible CNBC is as a network. The result wasn't pretty, but as Alex Koppelman noted, it was "a riveting half-hour, something almost completely unlike anything else ever seen on television."
Watching the evisceration, I couldn't help but wonder why it takes a comedian on Comedy Central to do the kind of interview the non-fake news shows ought to be doing. When the media establishment marvels at Jon Stewart's popularity, they tend to think it's his humor. It's not. It's because he calls "bullsh*t" when most major media players won't. He did so last night, and it made for important viewing.
Go watch.
- Joe Sudbay (DC) This is the interview everyone is talking about and it's even getting big coverage in the traditional media: Reuters, The New York Times and the Associated Press titles its piece, "Stewart hammers Cramer on `The Daily Show.'"
Jon Stewart asks questions that no one else asked. The business media was to the economic crisis as the DC media was to the Iraq War and other Bush lies. He has a line to Cramer "you all know what's going on." That line captures the essence of much of the corporate media. - Sully on To Catch A Predator.
I watched the Daily Show with growing shock last night. Did you expect that? I expected a jolly and ultimately congenial discussion, after some banter. What Cramer walked into was an ambush of anger. He crumbled from the beginning. From then on, with the almost cruel broadcasting of his earlier glorifying of financial high-jinks, you almost had to look away. This was, in my view, a real cultural moment. It was a storming of the Bastille. It was, as Fallows notes, journalism.
Stewart - that little comic with the Droopy voice for Lieberman - is actually becoming an accidental activist. Why he matters, is why South Park matters. He, like Matt and Trey, do not leave aside their own profession from scrutiny: they have the actual balls to take it on. There is a cloying familiarity among many cable show hosts and television personalities. We all have to get along, even though some of us may believe that others of us are very much part of the problem, rather than the solution. And what Stewart has done is rip off that little band-aid of faux solidarity for a modicum of ethical and moral accountability.
Now, I know Jim Cramer a little. The reason he crumbled last night, I think, is because deep down, he knows Stewart's right. He isn't that television clown all the way down. And deeper down, he knows it's not all a game - not now they've run off with grandpa's retirement money.
It's not enough any more, guys, to make fantastic errors and then to carry on authoritatively as if nothing just happened. You will be called on it. In some ways, the blogosphere is to MSM punditry what Stewart is to Cramer: an insistent and vulgar demand for some responsibility, some moral and ethical accountabilty for previous decisions and pronouncements.
Braver, please. And louder.
- Fallows - It's true: Jon Stewart has become Edward R. Murrow.
Through karmic guidance, I sprang awake at the exact moment Jon Stewart was beginning his
merciless demolition ofinterview with Jim Cramer of CNBC's "Mad Money."
Yes, it is cliched to praise Stewart as the "true" voice of news; and, yes, it is too pinata-like to join the smacking of CNBC. If you want to feel sorry for me, CNBC = 25% of the English-language TV news offerings available in China, the others being CNN, BBC, and the Chinese government's own CCTV-9.
But I found this -- the Stewart/Cramer slaughter -- incredible. Although, improbably, I share a journalistic background with Cramer*, I thought Stewart, without excessive showboating, did the journalistic sensibility proud.
Just before leaving China -- ie, two days ago -- I saw with my wife the pirate-video version of Frost/Nixon, showing how difficult it is in real time to ask the kind of questions Stewart did. I know, Frost was dealing with a former president. Still, it couldn't have been easy to do what Stewart just did. Seeing this interview justified the three-day trip in itself.
Swampland commenter choska Says:
At the Washington Post Howard Kurtz does his best to minimize the damage to his profession: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html?hpid=topnews
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Interesting that Kurtz pulled out the quote from Cramer who claimed that CNBC was only reporting what the CEOs said, even though they knew they were lying.
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THIS IS EXACTLY the same defense that reporters like Kurtz and the rest of the MSM including Time use to justify how they covered up for the Bush administration: they were lying to us but we were just reporting what they said.
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CNBC is FAR from the only "journalism" outlet that has traded their integrity for access. Every Sunday, on every show, the reporters don't ask truly tough questions because they know they have to keep getting access in order to keep their jobs.
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Tim Russert's true genius was his realization that he could ask inconsequential "gotcha" questions that made him look tough while enabling his interviewees to completely avoid dealing with tough issues.
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And it never ends. This weekend John King has Cheney on to listen to him spin lies. It is a mortal lock that King won't ask a substantial or well research question.There are serious reasons to believe that Cheney committed war crimes by running an "executive execution" squad out of his office. He's never answered what role he played in manipulating the energy markets.
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But we'll get no answers on this on Sunday from King. He'll merely introduce Cheney, ask a few non-serious question in an oh-so-serious voice, and Cheney will proceed to spin more lies will be spun into the American consciousness.
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The stunning thing is that King, the rest of the "journalists" at CNN, and everyone watching will know that Cheney is lying and that King is simply allowing him to do it. And no one will care.
And Howie Kurtz will applaud.
Already pushing the corporate media, here's Swampland Commenter sgwhiteinfla taking on Michael Scherer: It took me a minute to figure out that he was talking about Joe Scarborough when he said "tell doucheborough". Scherer you should aspire to conduct the kind of interview that Jon Stewart gave Jim Cramer last night. And I am not talking about just with Republicans either. Journalists in this country need to grow back their damn back bone and figure out that what the people want is tough questions of public officials not some kind of softballs or repetition of talking points. Here is the deal, Eric Cantor would probably want to talk to you a lot more than he would want to go on The Daily Show. What does that say about the level of YOUR work? If life were fair Jon Stewart would be the host of Meet The Press. Because its not he will continue to be on Comedy Central eviscerating people on the few occasions when they make the unfortunate choice to go on his show and the rest of the "Serious People" will continue to get mainstream media types to be their personal mouth pieces. Something is seriously wrong with that picture.
Via the ever restrained Matthew Yglesias: No, Fuck You
Ladies and gentlemen, the nation’s top journalism school:But the push for modernization has also raised the ire of some professors, particularly those closely tied to Columbia’s crown jewel, RW1. “Fuck new media,” the coordinator of the RW1 program, Ari Goldman, said to his RW1 students on their first day of class, according to one student. Goldman, a former Times reporter and sixteen-year veteran RW1 professor, described new-media training as “playing with toys,” according to another student, and characterized the digital movement as “an experimentation in gadgetry.”
This is like saying that writing books is an experiment in playing with printing presses.
- Commenter Steve LaBonne (March 12th, 2009 at 10:03 am) Says:
Them newfangled horseless carriages will never catch on. Now, let’s get back to Buggy Repair 101.
digby Long Term Leadership
Here's a blast from the past:
October 15, 1992Lest anyone think that was just the blowhard mouthing off on the pages of National Review, it was actually in the New York Times. The establishment has been validating him and his tired, shopworn schtick for a long, long time. I don't know why it's even controversial that he would be considered the leader of the GOP at this point. Everything he says now is what he said then and every day in between. He is the Republican Party and has been for a very, very long time.
Get Angry, Bush
By RUSH H. LIMBAUGH
Rush H. Limbaugh, a syndicated radio and television talk show host, is author of "The Way Things Ought to Be."
The most important thing President Bush must reveal in tonight's Presidential debate is anger. Make no mistake -- his Democratic opponent richly deserves it.
In addition to being disingenuous, Bill Clinton is Robo-Candidate, a walking, talking public policy manual. Friends, you could see his programming at work Sunday night. Step 1: Pause 2.6 seconds while the requisite issue is installed in the brain. Step 2: Grimace to provide the illusion that human thought is occurring. (Bite lip if emotion is necessary.) Step 3: Play back Sincere Policy Answer 5b. This is a candidate, folks, whose most effective weapon is to stupefy voters.
And -- though it boggles the mind -- the strategy appears to be working. How else can you explain, in this era of virulent distrust of government, that the candidate ahead in the polls is the one most infatuated with making government bigger and more intrusive and more expensive? Obviously, no one is thinking about what the man actually says.
As Ross "I'm All Ears" Perot provided comic relief, George Bush went about giving a rock solid performance in St. Louis. You won't find this assessment anywhere else, friends, but the fact is: Mr. Bush told the truth. What he said was correct. He spoke with assurance and he was composed. These observations are unassailable -- go back and watch the tape.
The key to these debates, however, is television ability, pure and simple. President Bush needs to cut through the noise so that his strong message will connect with the public. To do this, he must marshal his passion, his energy, his conviction, his confidence. And he must do so in such a way that it forces Governor Clinton off his formulated answers, allowing the public to take a true measure of the man.
The starting point must be the economy. Granted, this is a tough economy, but the President should not be defensive about his optimistic message, which is absolutely correct. I am weary, as he should be, of his opponents sneeringly characterizing him as "out of touch" because he dares to portray the American economy as the strongest in the world.
It is.
Inflation has been whipped, inventories are lean, interest rates have been wrestled to 20-year lows. Housing starts, retail and car sales have been posting gains. Although politically tempting, Mr. Bush must not, as Mr. Clinton has, pander to the electorate's current masochistic desire for tales of economic pain, misery and woe. The President's upbeat reckoning is, in fact, an honest one.
When Bill Clinton says we are in the worst economic period in 50 years, the President has a right to be angry. The worst economic period in the last 50 years was under Jimmy Carter, which led to the 1981-82 recession, a recession more punishing than the current one.
Indeed, let Mr. Bush press Mr. Clinton to do the math on his "Putting Government First" economic plan, which will devastate American business. And when the Governor says, "We don't need any more trickle-down economics," the President must pointedly ask why the Democratic Party always runs against prosperity.
When Mr. Clinton links the President with McCarthyism, Mr. Bush can again be furious. The double standard here amazes me. Conservatives in every area of life -- Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, for example -- have been crucified for past statements and activities, real or imagined. Yet examine the record and judgment of a liberal Democrat (say, a vaguely explained trip to Moscow when Moscow was literally enemy territory) and you are denounced for using sleaze and dirty tricks.
This, to quote a great leader, must not stand.
Via Heather at C&L, as much fun as it was to watch Matthews cut Fleischer off at the knees the other day, it is important to remember his history as a court sycophant:
As Jon noted at Perrspectives back in 2007 Chris Matthews: Bush White House "Good Guys" Won't Silence Me:
But what we do know is that Chris Matthews likes George W. Bush and the "good guys" of his White House - a lot. They may be, Matthews now suggests, thugs and criminals, but they are thugs and criminals you want to drink a beer with all the same:
"I thought in listening to the president, I was listening to one of the great neoconservative minds. We were given a rare opportunity to hear the real philosophy of this administration with regard to the war in Iraq." (August 9, 2007)
"I like him. Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the left." (November 28, 2005)
"Sometimes it glimmers with this man, our president, that kind of sunny nobility." (October 25, 2005)
"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical." (May 1, 2003)
"For example, George Allen is a lot like George Bush. He's friendly. He's a jock in a way. He's happy go lucky. He's a good guy to hang out with, kicks back." (May 24, 2006)
"They're very adept politically, this White House. And whatever you think of Karl Rove, he is good and he is tough." (October 29, 2004)
"Tony [Snow] has no regrets, nor do any of us for being his friend. Good guy, he has been, he is, and he will be." (September 4, 2007)
"And as we sign off today, it was the last day on the job for White House press secretary, the very likable, the very good guy, Tony Snow." (September 17, 2007)
"Tom DeLay, you are not in this buisness for the money. You live modestly. You commute back and forth from Washington to Houston, Texas. Why? What drives you every day?" (January 24, 2006)
"We'll be right back with House Majority Leader John Boehner. You can see this man's greatness." (March 6, 2006)
"And Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico - a good guy, by the way - intends to retire from the Senate when his term ends next year." (October 3, 2007)
"I think you beat a good guy [Jim Talent]. I looked at all the Republican candidates running for election in tough elections. I thought he was probably the best of them." To Missouri Senator-elect Claire McCaskill, (November 28, 2006)
"Mike DeWine, a good guy." (February 9, 2007)
"Chris Shays, actually a good guy, we'll see how he deals with this thing." (August 28, 2006)
SGW finds the Post and Times A Day Late And A Dollar Short:
The New York Times and the Washington Post finally decided to take an in depth look into allegations that the pro Israel lobby was integral in derailing Chas Freeman's appointment to chair the NIC. Glenzilla wasn't impressed with their previous efforts at the task.
"... ... Yet reporters agreed to keep AIPAC's "private" involvement a secret by allowing them to do everything "on background," and -- far worse -- then allowed what they knew to be the false impression to be created that AIPAC had no involvement in the campaign. Instead of the truth, what we have is AIPAC insinuating (through Mark Mazzetti's article) and Fred Hiatt outright stating that Freeman's accusations of AIPAC's involvement are false and deranged -- all because journalists concealed AIPAC's involvement by agreeing to keep it all off the record and therefore pretending it didn't exist. ..."You really should read the whole thing as it deals with something that irks the hell out of me too, and thats journalist's handing out anonymity by the truck load these days and effectively just becoming outlets for talking points and spin instead of doing actual reporting. There used to be a time when to go "off record" a person actually had to have pertinent reasons to do so. Now basically all they have to do is say they don't want their name attached to their words and journalists, always looking for a scoop, grant them anonymous status and then uncritically report the things they are told. Its turning into a form of free adverstising for political players and its further destroying the already shaky credibility of the mainstream media.
C&L's Amato: CBS's Chip Reid - "Democrats Raising Their Ugly Heads"
Tell us how you really feel? Chip Reid was questioning Robert Gibbs during a presser today about how far transparency will go in the administration and as he switched topics to health care, he characterized Kent Conrad's worries about health care spending like this....
Reid: Democrats also raising their ugly heads, but ahh, on the hill. Kent Conrad, actually he's a very handsome man"
There was a time when PBS and NPR could be relied upon for honest, fact-based reporting. But in recent years they have adopted RW frames on pretty much every political or policy story. Case in point, scarecrow's PBS Distorts Omnibus Spending Bill, Repeats GOP Nonsense on Earmarks
If you watched recent tv news coverage of the passage of the Omnibus spending bill, you would learn that this "massive" bill was "loaded with pork" -- a monument to irresponsible, wasteful spending. That was tonight's message from "reporting" on PBS's News Hour and Judy Woodruff's interview with Norm Ornstein from AEI. But it was false.
Kwami Holman started by quoting the usual pillars of fiscal responsibility -- all Republicans -- on how the bill was stuffed with 9,000 earmarks. Woodruff then interviewed Ornstein with questions apparently meant to tease out how outrageous the earmark process was. Except Norm didn't say that.
Woodruff never asked "was this really a serious problem in this Bill?" Ironically, Ornstein's actual answers all added up to "no" and "this issue is grossly overstated." Instead we learned the following:
1. An "earmark" is not inherently bad. It's just one way for Congress to direct how federal dollars are spent. In an earmark, Congress says, "spend $$ for this particular project, i.e., this specific highway."
2. If there's no earmark, no money is saved; instead Congress allocates money to an agency or department for the general purpose ("highways"), and the agency/department determines how and to whom to allocate the funds.
3. Ornstein suggests there's no inherent reason for Congress to do one or the other, as long as we have transparency, no corruption behind the scenes, and an opportunity for review before Congress makes its final decision. Competitive bidding can occur either way.
4. Ornstein did not allege there there were any such problems in this bill. He added that only a "few" earmarks have such problems, and he wasn't talking about any earmarks in this bill.
5. Congress has already improved both transparency and the opportunity for review, though Congress and Obama have suggested more, such as posting proponents' earmarks in advance on their website and involving the executive in screening proposals before passage.
We also know the total amount of "earmarks" in this bill added up to less than 3 percent of the total spending, counting those (about 40 percent) requested by Republicans and the previous Bush Administration.
So despite the fact that the "earmark problem" was given wide play on all networks, including an opportunity for McCain, Pence and even Obama to grandstand about wasteful spending/pork/earmarks, they were not a serious problem in the Omnibus Bill.
In the meantime, you probably haven't heard, because the media generally chose not to tell us, that the bill contains significant increased funding for items that had long been underfunded by the Bush Administration. You can think of this as both worthwhile public spending and economic stimulus. Here's a sampling (increases from Bush budget) from the House Report:
-- $938 million more for the National Institute of Health, to help fund 10,600 new research grants;
-- $125 million more to provide community health centers for 470,000 ininsured folks;
-- $75 million more to states to expand health coverage;
-- $26 million more to fund insurance pools for uninsured high risk
patients-- $33 million more for training nurses and other health professionals;
-- $27 million more for small, rural hospitals to serve 775,000 in underserved communities.
That's just a few of the items from one of nine areas of funding. Other lists are here.
No one is suggesting the bill is perfect, or that it contains all the right priorities and nothing else. But Pelosi's House deserves some credit for redirecting federal spending away from Bush era distortions and along lines that needed more funding, and it's sad that Obama thinks he has to apologize for signing it.
Update from Media Matters: CBS' reporting is even worse. That would be Chip Reid's ugly reporting
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