President Obama took on a pesky, interloping fly (insert a snarky, put-down of an annoying pol) during a taped interview with CNBC. And Obama won. It was a literal smack-down.
Then, as the CNBC camera folks trained the lens on the fly's carcass lying on the White House rug the President said, "I got the sucker."
'Twas an odd, albeit amusing bit of video. But not, apparently to PETA, if the gossipy celeb-centric web site TMZ is to be believed. The group reportedly issued a statement which took the presidential fly killer to task for summarily executing the insect. The statement said in part, "He isn't the Buddha. He's a human being and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act."
Good grief.
Showing posts with label CNBC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CNBC. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
'Daily Show' Massacre: Jon Stewart as a New Brand of Media Critic
It was so brutal last night, when Jon Stewart absolutely destroyed CNBC's Jim Cramer's will to live during his Daily Show interview that I almost felt badly for Cramer. Thought he'd burst into tears at any moment. He was reduced to a quivering shell. (The first part of the three-part interview is below, link here.)
Several interview post-mortems have called Stewart a new kind of fearless media critic who's doing the work that the "real" journalists won't do, which is holding pundits accountable for what they say on the air and for the impact of those words on others. In the case of the CNBC analysts (Cramer, et al), Stewart's point was that when they urge people to "Buy! Buy! Buy!" stocks in certain companies, people listen because CNBC bills itself as the place for insightful business news from experts in the field. But when their prognostications go awry, the commentators don't own the responsibility for their words . . . until Stewart skewers them, as was Cramer's case last night. THEN they finally admit that mistakes were made.
The Atlantic's James Fallows, author of a fantastic book on the media called Breaking the News, likened Stewart's interview with Cramer to interviews by the ground-breaking Edward R. Murrow, noting, "I thought Stewart, without excessive showboating, did the journalistic sensibility proud."
The New York Times' media reporter Brian Stelter observed: "Mr. Stewart questioned Mr. Cramer about the perception that CNBC acts as a cheerleader for the investment community. 'The financial news industry is not just guilty of a sin of omission but a sin of commission,' Mr. Stewart said. Mr. Cramer agreed that he made a number of faulty predictions over the years."
The Associated Press described Stewart as "hammering" Cramer and telling the commentator that the fall-out from his and his colleagues' bad predictions was no joke. AP reported:
"Stewart said he and Cramer are both snake-oil salesmen, only The Daily Show is labeled as such. He claimed CNBC shirked its journalistic duty by believing corporate lies, rather than being an investigative 'powerful tool of illumination.' And he alleged CNBC was ultimately in bed with the businesses it covered -- that regular people's stocks and 401Ks were 'capitalizing your adventure.'"
This interview harkened back to Stewart's obliteration of CNN's Crossfire in 2004 where the comedian called the political pundits on the carpet for contributing nothing but negativism and bile to our national political discussions and asked them to just "stop." He was as ruthless then as he was last night. (FYI: The quality of the video below isn't great.)
I'm a regular viewer of political chat shows. Morning Joe. This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Fox News Sunday. Meet the Press (a shell of its former self from the Russert years). Hardball with Chris Matthews. But this particular interview, aired on COMEDY Central, was one of the toughest and on-the-money interviews I've seen in some time, even tougher than Katie Couric's Sarah Palin piece. When I turned off my TV last night, I was still stunned by what I'd witnessed.
Several interview post-mortems have called Stewart a new kind of fearless media critic who's doing the work that the "real" journalists won't do, which is holding pundits accountable for what they say on the air and for the impact of those words on others. In the case of the CNBC analysts (Cramer, et al), Stewart's point was that when they urge people to "Buy! Buy! Buy!" stocks in certain companies, people listen because CNBC bills itself as the place for insightful business news from experts in the field. But when their prognostications go awry, the commentators don't own the responsibility for their words . . . until Stewart skewers them, as was Cramer's case last night. THEN they finally admit that mistakes were made.
The Atlantic's James Fallows, author of a fantastic book on the media called Breaking the News, likened Stewart's interview with Cramer to interviews by the ground-breaking Edward R. Murrow, noting, "I thought Stewart, without excessive showboating, did the journalistic sensibility proud."
The New York Times' media reporter Brian Stelter observed: "Mr. Stewart questioned Mr. Cramer about the perception that CNBC acts as a cheerleader for the investment community. 'The financial news industry is not just guilty of a sin of omission but a sin of commission,' Mr. Stewart said. Mr. Cramer agreed that he made a number of faulty predictions over the years."
The Associated Press described Stewart as "hammering" Cramer and telling the commentator that the fall-out from his and his colleagues' bad predictions was no joke. AP reported:
"Stewart said he and Cramer are both snake-oil salesmen, only The Daily Show is labeled as such. He claimed CNBC shirked its journalistic duty by believing corporate lies, rather than being an investigative 'powerful tool of illumination.' And he alleged CNBC was ultimately in bed with the businesses it covered -- that regular people's stocks and 401Ks were 'capitalizing your adventure.'"
This interview harkened back to Stewart's obliteration of CNN's Crossfire in 2004 where the comedian called the political pundits on the carpet for contributing nothing but negativism and bile to our national political discussions and asked them to just "stop." He was as ruthless then as he was last night. (FYI: The quality of the video below isn't great.)
I'm a regular viewer of political chat shows. Morning Joe. This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Fox News Sunday. Meet the Press (a shell of its former self from the Russert years). Hardball with Chris Matthews. But this particular interview, aired on COMEDY Central, was one of the toughest and on-the-money interviews I've seen in some time, even tougher than Katie Couric's Sarah Palin piece. When I turned off my TV last night, I was still stunned by what I'd witnessed.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Suburban Mom's Political Fix: 'Tis Gettin' Ugly in Cable TV Newsland, NBC vs Stewart
Let me first say this: I'm a big fan of Morning Joe. Love the camaraderie between Joe and Mika. Love the in-depth political conversations in which they engage that sometimes sound like discussions you might overhear in a bar at 12:20 in the morning. I'm a bigggg fan.
Last week, I laughed my fanny off at Jon Stewart's lambasting of CNBC -- Rick Santelli in particular -- for what Stewart saw as aggressive market cheerleading, urging people to buy stocks from companies that, not too long after the buy recommendations were made, collapsed.
When I heard Joe Scarborough yesterday morning talking about Stewart with CNBC's Jim Cramer (Joe felt Stewart was unfairly targeting his CNBC colleagues and cherry-picking prognostications just to make them look foolish), I knew it would get ugly. Cramer, who also appeared on the Today Show that morning, wasn't pleased with Stewart either.
Which, of course, only prodded Stewart to attack anew, and brilliantly, I might add, particularly the part at the end of the segment below (link here) where he had Dora the Explorer weighed in on the war between cable network personalities while Dora's pet monkey Boots offered to throw feces at Joe and Cramer.
Tangential question: Why is Jon Stewart doing the job that the news media should be doing?
Last week, I laughed my fanny off at Jon Stewart's lambasting of CNBC -- Rick Santelli in particular -- for what Stewart saw as aggressive market cheerleading, urging people to buy stocks from companies that, not too long after the buy recommendations were made, collapsed.
When I heard Joe Scarborough yesterday morning talking about Stewart with CNBC's Jim Cramer (Joe felt Stewart was unfairly targeting his CNBC colleagues and cherry-picking prognostications just to make them look foolish), I knew it would get ugly. Cramer, who also appeared on the Today Show that morning, wasn't pleased with Stewart either.
Which, of course, only prodded Stewart to attack anew, and brilliantly, I might add, particularly the part at the end of the segment below (link here) where he had Dora the Explorer weighed in on the war between cable network personalities while Dora's pet monkey Boots offered to throw feces at Joe and Cramer.
Tangential question: Why is Jon Stewart doing the job that the news media should be doing?
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Puppies, Kittens & Jim Cramer
The Colbert Report's Stephen Colbert lampooned professional media prognosticators -- the same ones skewered by Jon Stewart -- who've been aggressively advising President Barack Obama to be more positive about our dour economic situation, despite the negative Dow numbers and layoff notices.
So Colbert interviewed CNBC's Jim Cramer (who was smacked around in Stewart's 8-minute anti-CNBC barrage on The Daily Show) while images of puppies and kittens ran behind Cramer's head. Colbert said the footage -- puppies frolicking in a meadow, with giant bows around their necks -- would make people feel more "comfortable" and possibly stop shoving all their money under their mattresses.
I couldn't stop laughing. (Link to the video here.)
So Colbert interviewed CNBC's Jim Cramer (who was smacked around in Stewart's 8-minute anti-CNBC barrage on The Daily Show) while images of puppies and kittens ran behind Cramer's head. Colbert said the footage -- puppies frolicking in a meadow, with giant bows around their necks -- would make people feel more "comfortable" and possibly stop shoving all their money under their mattresses.
I couldn't stop laughing. (Link to the video here.)
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Jon Stewart Deftly Destroys CNBC, Including Santelli
I, like, the rest of the informed citizenry, have been greatly distressed about the economic news as of late. It's so dire and bleak. It seems as though a huge black hole has opened up and all these solid American companies (or companies we thought were solid and would be around forever, like Ford), are hurtling into it . . . that's when those companies aren't being thrown lifelines worth trillions of dollars in taxpayer money with no guarantee that the money will stave off further disaster. (The New York Times breaks down the sordid amounts here.)
Even the normally optimistic Brian Williams is so down in the dumps these days that at the end of his NBC Nightly News broadcast last night, he put out a call for viewers to send in feel good stories about folks who are doing good things for others so that he could report on something positive for a change.
Yes, it's gotten that bad.
Columns like Maureen Dowd's yesterday, detailing the obscene pork (8,000+ items including funds for "pig odor research," "catfish genetics research" and a tattoo removal program for gang members) in the proposed federal budget -- pork which Senator Obama said he'd eliminate when he was campaigning for president, but now that he's the Commander in Chief, he and his people are saying that the pork in this proposed budget is President Bush's fault, not his -- just make things feel hopeless.
Then I saw Jon Stewart. Thank God for Jon Stewart. I don't normally tune into The Daily Show, despite the constant pleadings of my friend Gayle who's a major Stewart fan. I usually watch local news at 11 p.m. and then go to bed. But I digress . . . Jon Stewart was supposed to have as a guest the now infamous CNBC analyst Rick Santelli, he of the much-ballyhooed rant against the Obama administration's housing bailout proposal and how it would reward bad behavior and help people who bought more house than they could afford, people who Santelli called "losers" who made bad decisions.
But Santelli canceled his Daily Show appearance. And I'm so glad he did.
What Stewart & Co. aired instead was a damningly hysterical and tragic indictment of how business journalists, specifically from CNBC, blew the coverage of this economic crisis, how they cheered on large businesses -- which are now receiving mucho bailout bucks -- and that the CNBC staff are no better than the "losers" who made bad home loan decisions. (Video link here.)
Even the normally optimistic Brian Williams is so down in the dumps these days that at the end of his NBC Nightly News broadcast last night, he put out a call for viewers to send in feel good stories about folks who are doing good things for others so that he could report on something positive for a change.
Yes, it's gotten that bad.
Columns like Maureen Dowd's yesterday, detailing the obscene pork (8,000+ items including funds for "pig odor research," "catfish genetics research" and a tattoo removal program for gang members) in the proposed federal budget -- pork which Senator Obama said he'd eliminate when he was campaigning for president, but now that he's the Commander in Chief, he and his people are saying that the pork in this proposed budget is President Bush's fault, not his -- just make things feel hopeless.
Then I saw Jon Stewart. Thank God for Jon Stewart. I don't normally tune into The Daily Show, despite the constant pleadings of my friend Gayle who's a major Stewart fan. I usually watch local news at 11 p.m. and then go to bed. But I digress . . . Jon Stewart was supposed to have as a guest the now infamous CNBC analyst Rick Santelli, he of the much-ballyhooed rant against the Obama administration's housing bailout proposal and how it would reward bad behavior and help people who bought more house than they could afford, people who Santelli called "losers" who made bad decisions.
But Santelli canceled his Daily Show appearance. And I'm so glad he did.
What Stewart & Co. aired instead was a damningly hysterical and tragic indictment of how business journalists, specifically from CNBC, blew the coverage of this economic crisis, how they cheered on large businesses -- which are now receiving mucho bailout bucks -- and that the CNBC staff are no better than the "losers" who made bad home loan decisions. (Video link here.)
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