Last night I stayed up and watched Comedy Central to see the smack down of Jon Stewart nailing Jim Cramer. It was really impressive.
A couple of years ago I listened to a book on tape - The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media and Manipulation by Howard Kurtz (Paperback - Jun 5, 2001). It was basically about these shows - like Mad Money, etc. - which tried to use the "Sportscenter" model about finance and the stock market. And so we now have this daily - even hourly - report on the stock market like it is a basketball game.
As these programs became watched there were people who became celebrities - and Jim Cramer is one of them. They present themselves as experts and recommend what to buy and sell. The only thing is that there is nobody out there really holding them acountable at all. Nobody is even putting together a win/loss record of the "experts." They are like "fortune tellers" much more than the financial experts. And they are dealing with influencing how people spend their savings. It is not a game.
Jon Stewart was masterful is calling Jim Cramer to accountability - because they (he and others) have certainly not helped in this financial mess that we are in. Their session together was not all that funny - but it was important to watch Cramer be faced with someone speaking the truth to him.
In the church, we are called to speak truth to power. But that is also what artists do - and Jon Stewart is a comedic artist.
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3 comments:
yes - it was awesome! i think one of my favorite quick barbs was when cramer said "we have to fill 17 hours of live tv" and stewart said "maybe you should do less" or something like that. it kills me a) that CNBC is going to let Cramer take the fall b) Cramer doesn't even realize how stupid he is for being the "face" of this crap and c) well - i have no "c", but my mom always tells me that you should give three.... darn
oh - i thought of my "c" - it also kills me how much we allow others to push responsibility to something else - whether it is "not our fault because we have to have 17 hours of live screen time and we are bound to make mistakes" or because "no one will listen to our truth, so what are we to do", or "well, the market is just bad - it is a one in a million thing that happens". i think blame is a difficult thing to throw around and we have to be careful that we do not take too much at times. but i see the people driving this economy into the ground to be some of those who refuse to take account of their own decisions playing into greater systems that they HAVE DECIDED to play into. we do all have choices.
i don't know if i can live by such ideals, but i know them and follow them when i see them!
We saw it last night and were very impressed with Jon Stewart's questioning and confrontation. He was very firm, but it was appropriate and necessary.
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