Pundit takes a beating
Jon Stewart rails against ‘Mad Money’ host as failed watchdog
NEW YORK – The verdict from critics Friday was quick and unsparing: Comedian Jon Stewart trounced CNBC pundit Jim Cramer in their televised encounter Thursday night.
Forgoing his typically caustic humor, a serious and at times angry Stewart eviscerated Cramer for jocularly discussing how to manipulate the stock market and slammed CNBC as an ineffective watchdog of Wall Street.
In the process, the host of “The Daily Show” provided one of those memorable television moments that distills public mood – in this case, angst about the economy’s swift decline. Stewart also displayed the tough interviewing skills that belie his insistence that he’s merely an entertainer.
“It does give us pause when we tell journalism students or the public that he’s not a journalist,” said Charles Bierbauer, a veteran correspondent for CNN and ABC who is now dean of the University of South Carolina’s College of Mass Communications and Information Studies. “He can be one when he wants to be.”
The much-hyped showdown between the two men grew out of a bit last week on “The Daily Show” in which Stewart satirized CNBC’s coverage of the market as overly credulous. But by the end of Cramer’s appearance on the late-night program Thursday, the episode was being cast as a triumph for Stewart and a public-relations disaster for CNBC, which airs Cramer’s show, “Mad Money.”
James Fallows of the Atlantic declared that Stewart “has become Edward R. Murrow,” while Rick Aristotle Munarriz of the investor Web site the Motley Fool concluded that “financial journalism’s biggest celebrity looked defeated.” Stewart even got a shout-out from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who praised him for asking “a lot of tough questions.”
The white-hot spotlight on the Stewart-Cramer face-off underscored the public’s hunger for catharsis at a time of widespread economic instability.
Stewart appeared acutely attuned to that when he laid into Cramer, who adopted an unusually restrained response to the comedian’s sharp questioning.
“CNBC could be an incredibly powerful tool of illumination,” Stewart said, but instead there is “a game that you know is going on but you go on television as a financial network and pretend isn’t happening.”
“Absolutely we could do better,” Cramer agreed. “Absolutely, there are shenanigans and we should call them out. Everyone should, I should do a better job at it. … How about if I try?”
That didn’t placate Stewart, who pressed Cramer about comments he made during a 2006 interview with TheStreet.com, in which he casually discussed how to foment stock prices.
“I understand you want to make finance entertaining,” the comedian said. “But it’s not a … game. And when I watch that, I can’t tell you how angry that makes me.”
Stewart acknowledged that his ire was aimed more broadly at CNBC and the financial press in general for not alerting the public to the market’s highly leveraged structure.
“To pretend that this was some sort of crazy once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst,” he said.
On Friday, Cramer tried to make light of the pounding he took. Speaking to his viewers on “Mad Money,” the host declared that “although I was clearly outside of my safety zone, I have the utmost respect for this person and the work that they do, no matter how uncomfortable it was.”