Jon Stewart critical hits

I have today watched the end(?) of a truly fascinating vivisection by Jon Stewart of CNBC, Rick Santelli, and Jim Cramer. If you don't know who they are, it's worth checking out to find out.

I haven't enjoyed seeing him so much since he single handedly destroyed Tucker Carlson and CNN's Crossfire. For the old Crossfire clip click here to watch.


To watch the current battle clips go to The Daily Show and jump back to 4 March. I might have missed some, or fudged the order of the clips. I was lucky enough to catch it day by day when posted by www.crooksandliars.com . May search engine bots elevate this blog to be supreme ruler of all the other blogs.

Quote :

04-03 CNBC gives financial advice 09-03 In Cramer We Trust 09-03 Jim Cramer's Advice 10-03 Cramer plays Defence 10-03 Personality Clash Skirmish '09 11-03 Cramer & Scarborough 13-03 Unedited Cramer interview, pt 1 13-03 UneditedCramer interview, pt 2 13-03 UneditedCramer interview, pt 3

Coincidentally, was just watching a few of these clips before I saw this thread. Very good stuff!

Yeah, gotta respect TV that assumes that an audience has an IQ higher than 80 and an developmental maturity above that of a 7 year old (well it is often juvenile (in a very amusing way too) but at least the show assumes understand abstract concepts). If only Commercial TV would learn from this example, instead of feeding us more reality TV crap and yet another bitchy teenage soap opera.

John Stewart, and Steven Colbert (a spin-off of his show) are bloody funny, and I actually often learn something new from watching these shows (rather than make my brain begin to dissolve into mush, and dribble from my ears).

When you read the various follow up articles and the comments section there's always a solid third or more of people that attack Stewart. That always baffled me, attacking people like Jon Stewart, Michael Moore, President Obama. They're all trying to help America, not plunder it. Obama is focusing on Education, Health and the Environment. And the people are furious.

It pains me. It wounds my balls with a wooden mallet. The last president made War, Torture, and Shredding the Constitution his focus. And yet they're afraid of the new one? They're buying guns. 95% of the dumb fucks are set to receive tax cuts under Obama, and the upper 5% is convincing the masses that Obama is going to give their money away to the poor and needy.

What's weird is that Obama said what he was going to do before the election. He won the election on that platform, and he has a mandate to do it. And after 8 years of corruption and wars without end, opponents or apparently purpose, the average Joe plumber wants to overthrow this tyrranical government that threatens their (Lawful Evil?) way of life.

I know its mindfucking on a national (sometimes international) scale, and in a small way it fascinates me (like a scientist studying the ebola virus... it's fine when it's confined to a petri dish in a secure lab but armagesmic terror when affecting 48% of free citizens in the developed world.) But I always thought that Truth would spread like fire through a lie. To expose it was to watch it dissipate into embers. But it doesn't work, the fire's too big, it's pissing into Black Saturday.

Need more people pissing.

Jon Stewart is one of the few media critics they have, given it's the media doing all the damage. Fox News, Hate radio, in fact, anything Rupert Murdoch pens, dipping his talons into a pool of virgin blood and scratching his musings across parchment made from an angel's hide. Perhaps I overreact, I don't really believe in angels. But the paranoid in me knows that they'll (yes, They. Them.) will go after Stewart now. They must throttle those that stand in the way. And then what will I watch?! The Onion's only occasionally funny.

This is The War on of Terror.

Well, as a better man than me once said... 'It's better to burn out than to fade away.'

Want some frightening statistics about the US?

Population: 300,000,000

Number of Morons: 6,000,000 - Yup, the bottom 2% of the IQ curve, 6 Million Morons.

Number of people below average intelligence: 150 Million.

You wonder why the media can always find someone doing or thinking something stupid?

No that's median intelligence. There's some citizen in the US with a brain the size of a football field, and he's skewed the average intelligence far to the right, boosting up all the Fox viewers who only watch that channel after they couldn't figure out how to change it with the remote.

The media's not doing anything stupid. It's still selling advertising like it always has. The only thing is, to combat an increasingly resistant and marketing-savvy consumer base they found a way to making everything you watch an ad. And the man with the big brain, he's figuring out how if he has enough gold yet to forge an enormous crown for his enormous head.

Jon Stewart has a great knack of teasing out issues from the perspective of the onlooker. From our perspective he nails it. Fortunately he operates from the safety of 'comedic viewpoint'. He is not accountable for his words beyond maintaining comedy enough to retain an audience. Those he 'interviews' are not in that position. They are accountable in many more ways; and when speaking to Stewart they are speaking to Stewart's audience and on his terms while still accountable in every other facet that they are involved. It's a no win situation. And last I looked Jon Stewart works for MTV (Viacom) a commercial company. He is funny because that is his job. He convinces people to watch that network and is therefore doing his job. He has some tasty merchandise too.

Don't get me wrong, I love his work, and among some of his pieces are some home truths. But I take it with a fairly hefty grain of salt. On your terms, with freedom of speech, with the ability to set the questions, manage the subject transitions, timing etc, couldn't you also dictate the tone of an 'interview?' Following an opinion - even one that is paid to keep you watching - is fine. Taking everything that paid opinion says as gospel is just the thin end of the wedge for all sorts of trouble.

Presumably the top end of the bell curve of intelligence applies in the US as well?

Ah... I know it's supposed to be entertainment... but don't forget that you're allowed to think for yourself as well.