I was in the middle of other things when people all over the web went cuckoo over Jon Stewarts alleged fisking of Jim Cramer. I have one thing to say about the entire affair and in the end I believe that it is the only thing that matters.
What Jim Cramer was that Jon Stewart never will be is someone who made money for people. Cramer was responsible for running a business whose job it was to make money for his clients - and he made it to the top of that field and had the responsibility for many people's jobs in the financial industry. No matter what Stewart says, in the end he is just an entertainer and he is responsible for what? To make people laugh. What Stewart is doing is taking the cheap shot to an art form with maybe a dozen 'researchers' who scour YouTube for something he can play for laughs. In the process, he has been mistaken for and misrepresented as an 'investigative journalist' or someone whose 'standards' of 'tough questions' have put the news media to shame.
And yet he still cannot hold a candle to The Onion.
Be that as it may, in the grand scheme of things Cramer was the boss of adults who worked in a very important industry that is currently in crisis - a crisis that means something to the livlihoods of millions of people around the world. Jon Stewart, on the other hand, is a comedian. If everyone of his equal talent and standing in his industry were to declare bankruptcy and never come back whose livelihoods would be affected? Perhaps bored college students with snarky attitudes might be found throwing their lattes against the walls, but little else would change.
When Stewart writes a book that compares favorably to PJ O'Rourke, give us grownups a jingle.
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