Jon Stewart's CNBC Smackdown

For those of you who haven't been watching The Daily Show lately, you've been missing some serious pwnage of the financial gurus at CNBC:



After Mad Money host Jim Cramer wrote an article protesting that Stewart had taken his comments out of context, Stewart, gentleman that he is, politely provided that context:



Not to be outdone, Jim Cramer got the chance to respond on the Today Show:



Watch his shit-eating grin turn into a frown as he watches that clip.

Well Cramer has just been confirmed as the guest on Thursday's Daily Show.

Should be interesting.

The interview:



I haven't seen Stewart like this since the Crossfire incident. R.I.P. Jim Cramer's career.

So true..but he did pull back a little. Still he got verbally murdered.

Er, well... What did I learn here today? Viacom apparently doesn't like their content on Youtube. That and Jim Cramer really doesn't know shit, a three year old picking his nose has more sense then most of the charlatans out there. He's just an animated TV showman, a sanctioned FAX machine fraud and a tool for the corporate oligarchy in Wall Street (I have nothing to back that up with but it just felt good to say so).

Having watched it, I'm sorta reluctant to watch the whole thing online. I kinda squirmed through the edited interview.

You know... Jon Stewart is a rock star, and I love him. He's funny, he's extremely intelligent, and he's ballsy. And I love The Daily Show. But sometimes it can be unfair, something that Stewart himself admits to. Watching that interview, Cramer couldn't get in a word. Stewart wouldn't let him talk at all. Cramer was very docile and basically just took a 30 minute long lashing session for CNBC and himself. I felt genuinely bad for Cramer on that show, and up until very recently, I had zero respect for the guy. My opinion of Cramer up until tonight was that he was an unrepentant liar and crook who happened to get a TV show. And while that's probably true and still true, I think he was very respectful and humble on Stewart's show, for whatever reason. I respect the guy a little more after watching him get his ass kicked, and it really wasn't a fair fight.

One of the problems I have with The Daily Show, despite the fact that I'm a big fan, is that sometimes they don't label the show as snake oil like Stewart says they do. They label it as a farce when it works for them, but they make very serious claims with a straight face the other times. Stewart bounces between a slapstick comedian and a serious commentator quite often. Stewart claims that it's a comedy show and that it shouldn't be taken seriously, but many of the things Stewart says are serious, intellectual, analytical things. His criticism of Cramer is definitely not a joke. He's perfectly serious, and he expects Cramer to treat him like an intellectual peer. But then again, anytime Stewart wants he can slip back into farce mode, and no one can treat him like a serious commentator. And I think it's problematic for Stewart to say, "hey, we're a comedy show, don't take us seriously," and then conduct an interview like the one he just did, all on the same show.

I kind of agree with you, it's very squirm worthy. But I think the reason for that is, Cramer went on the show and was completely humble and didn't pull an O'Riley and scream over Jon Stewart. Stewart was brutal, but I'll be fucked if he wasn't right. There are a lot of less than ethical positions to take in the stock market, and there are a lot of ways to manipulate the market when you get a reputation for knowing what's going on. Short positions don't exist to fuck people, they exist as a way for market forces to predict business failures. They've been perverted due to a lack of regulation. Which is pretty much the cause for most horrible failures in the market.

Also, happy birthday.

Since I can't sleep and that argument bugs me I'll argue the point.

What Cramer demonstrated to me in that interview was not any sort of genuine humility. Have you seen his recent appearances on the Today Show or Morning Joe, where he fully defended himself and the network? That was days ago. Then he goes on The Daily Show and says it's all appropriate and Stewart is right and he makes the sad face and we're supposed to feel sorry for him because he was civil when taking a beating? He was manipulating the market, causing the very problems that caused our giant collapse, and then decrying those methods on his television show. Or that is at least what the clips they showed from that website (?) seemed to be indicating. He was literally telling people how to shortsell more effectively, while claiming on the show to deplore the practice. The reason he looked so sheepish is because there wasn't really any justification. Which comes back to what Stewart said, that this isn't a joke and he's toying with the market to make himself money while fucking other people over. And you're saying, what, that getting a hostile half-hour interview is going over the line for this guy?

And yeah, the nature of The Daily Show is to mix silliness with a fairly consistent liberal ideology. That interplay is what makes the show what it is. Pointed satire isn't fair, it doesn't present the other side's viewpoints, and on bad days even the best satirists cross over into something that is more serious than silly, or swing the other way into something that is silly without being particularly funny. But we know that satire can't be our source for news, no matter how much we may agree with the satirist; they are not working to inform you of anything other than their perspective. Hence, snake oil. I don't see this as being a point of confusion for most viewers.

That being said, the interviews on The Daily Show are a different beast. Stewart isn't Colbert, maintaining the satirical element through the interviews; they're much closer to standard interviews with a comedian, with the tone of the interview tending to vary based on the gravity of the subject at hand. If you want to say that the show should be consistent during these segments, fine I guess, but I think that's to the detriment of the interview segment and ultimately the show. I think there's a pretty clear distinction when an interview is serious, when it's serious points mixed with some offhand jokes and when it's Paul Rudd dancing around.

PS: thanks AaronB

That's how I felt about his (Stewart's) rant on Crossfire years ago. As valid as some of his points were then, and are now, Stewart can be a frustrating critic for that very reason.

But arguing serious points in an entertainment format is a(n imperfect) compromise from the start, and so I have to recognize the limits of how serious or silly the show can be.

(Sorry: I'm wandering away from the Cramer interview and more into a Stewart-as-commentator discussion. I'll stop here.)

i don't see Stewart's habit of dancing back and forth over the line between comedian and commentator as a problem because i think it keeps him from being a liberal Rush Limbaugh. it lets him fulfill his function as court jester without having to actually be taken seriously.

That was an absolute evisceration. Stewart was merciless and pointed. I have to think that Cramer did not expect that walking in, but he absolutely cratered at the start and by the end he was just rolling over and taking it. It was kind of amazing to watch for several reasons. First, because it was obviously great theater. But more importantly, this was the type of journalism that you just don't see anymore. TV Politics has been distilled into 6 minute shouting head segments for so long that you forget what it's like to see someone tackle something tenaciously and with depth.

I don't have any sympathy for Cramer at all. As Koppel pointed out, this was a guy who was on TV deriding Stewart as a comedian and a variety show hack just three or four days ago. He was basically daring Stewart to take the subject seriously, so he did. You mess with the bull, etc, etc.

I just watched the full interview. The edited out parts were essentially the same in tone as the parts they left in, with the exception of one part at the beginning where Cramer was trying to explain something and Stewart unfairly brushed him off.

Really, what you're left with is the impression that Stewart absolutely despises Cramer for the duplicity inherent in the taped interview that he keeps showing clips from. Then you get to the end of it, and there's an edited out part where he describes what the market crash did to his mother, and it makes sense.

Regardless, I think this is fantastic self-aware reporting.

I fully agree that Cramer was acting humble on The Daily Show. I have a feeling he had a conversation with someone who controls his paycheck at NBC, and they said "you're going to let Stewart chew you out for half an hour, and be nice about it. We can't afford to lose all our viewers under 30 right now."

Why he decided to position himself as a fall guy, I do not know. The real coward here is Santelli, who wussed out on an interview with Stewart last week. Imagine what Stewart would have done to him.

Santelli's the one I'd like the heat to stay on.

On one level I agree, but I am just as happy to see him crawl under his rock and disappear. He knows better than to raise his head again.

Dude, even if he didn't have that conversation, he clearly realized (at some point before the interview) that while knuckling would be bad, NOT knuckling and getting the shit kicked out of you would be worse. If he hadn't acted contrite he'd have no one believing him at all.

This is why George Bush wouldn't dare do an interview with Stewart now. That and his massive denial and cognitive dissonance.

Just a theory here, but I'm wondering if doing the Daily Show was a form of penance for Cramer. Oop, nevermind. Jace just echoed my thoughts, sort of... It might be more then just about not losing viewers, it just might have to do with the fact that Cramer was wrong and too many people, including people at CNBC, followed his wrong-headed advice.

When you're wrong, you're wrong and no one likes it when they are wrong (it exposes the dubious nature of their craft once the market gets shaky). If you end up being so wrong that you piss off JS, then you're just asking for the lash. I'm sure people have lost millions based on the advice of Cramer, public humiliation is getting off easy.

George isn't the only one who wouldn't do that interview; Glenn Greenwald had a fabulous post today about just how similar Cramer's behavior is to standard Washington press corp behavior in the run-up to the war, with the only difference being that the press still thinks that this is the model of professionalism.

The issue isn't about being "right" or "wrong." Clearly, people who pick stocks (or horses, or whatever) are going to be wrong some of the time. The issue is that even when Cramer was being "right" he was knowingly feeding an industry that was built on lies and ponzi schemes. and he knew it

I think Cramer acting contrite and humble on the show was his attempt to shift the focus on to "yes, I was wrong about some stock tips." Instead of "what I did over the last years was try to make some people rich at the expense of the country's economy." And i worry that he was, to some degree, successful. He comes off as an idiot who got his hat handed to him by a much smarter guy, but Cramer isn't just dumb, he's been deliberately duplicitous. A shill for wall street dressed up as a journalist.

+1 and yes, as Pointblank says, Cramer has been duplicitious and also has *directly contributed* to the wild ride the economy has taken with his foolish antics and bizarre screeching for people to take their cash out of the banks and out of the markets.

For sure. That's exactly right.

Every time Stewart would criticize the practice of short selling, stock picking, and the "game" that Cramer and people like him have turned Wall Street into, Cramer either had no response or attempted to steer the conversation back to the details of the last few months. He has nothing to say when it comes to the nature of his chosen profession, because he knows that more and more people are considering his profession shady and exploitative. But if he can reduce the conflict down to "I was lied to by CEOs and made some bad calls," he steers the conversation away from any top-down criticism of his profession, and he makes it look like he's a guy in a perfectly reasonable profession who just got a bad break.

Yep. Cramer stands to be seen over time (in this context) as "a guy who made some wrong calls and copped to it" rather than "a guy who openly and knowingly played the system".

And this, Jace, is why Stewart wouldn't let him talk. The response time he got in was too much free spin coverage already, and had Stewart given him more time to maneuver, Cramer would have run that interview.