Poor Tucker Carlson, even after he had a makeover it still didn't help his nonsensical arguments. His knickers are in a bunch over Jon Stewart's skewering of CNBC's Jim Cramer. He's mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. That evil Jon Stewart needs to be stopped, I say! So Tucker took his complaints to The Daily Beast.
Before Cramer could defend himself, Stewart moved on to a new charge: Cramer and his colleagues at CNBC had known that the financial sector was in imminent danger of collapse, but had pretended otherwise—a ruse that Stewart described as “disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.”
Cramer was sure ready to pounce on the very mean Stewart until he blindsided him with a clever ruse. But a little later Carlson says this:
No matter. Cramer was almost incoherent by this point, cringing and apologetic. Stewart was becoming furious. “I understand you want to make finance interesting,” he said, “but it’s not a fucking game. And I, I, I—when I watch that, I can’t tell you how angry that makes me.”
Are you telling me that the brillant Jim Cramer was incoherent from a diversionary tactic Jon used to trip him up? Hmmm, maybe it was because Jim had no defense and was guilty as charged.
If you didn’t actually see the show, you wouldn’t know any of this, since there is a virtual ban on critical stories about Jon Stewart in the press. Nobody in memory has received a longer free ride. (CNBC stands in such awe of Stewart, the network hasn’t even tried to defend itself, even against his claim that its programming might be criminal.)
The entire cable news media was silent about the Cramer segment. It was like there was a virtual ban (except for CNN's Reliable Sources where Carlson called Stewart a "partisan Hack." Now that was comedy gold.) on this critical story of CNBC and the business world. Yes, the press is way too easy on him. Damn comedian gets away with telling the truth about the Cross Fire's of the TV world. He needs to get the full Gary Condit treatment. Send him to Gitmo and have Cheney waterboard him.
Before Cramer could defend himself, Stewart moved on to a new charge: Cramer and his colleagues at CNBC had known that the financial sector was in imminent danger of collapse, but had pretended otherwise—a ruse that Stewart described as “disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.”
This was even more farther-fetched. A ratings-hungry TV network had the scoop of the decade but decided to sit on it? Why? In order to curry favor with soon-to-be-disgraced corporate executives? It didn’t make sense.
Sure, Stewart is out of his mind because he put together a montage of outrageous behavior of CNBC talking heads after Rick Santelli of CNBC screamed at President Obama not to help the "losers" who would get assistance to try and save their homes: 'Screw them, it's their fault that the housing crisis had happened anyway, so why should we rich and smart people, the winners of our society, chip in?' Blaming homeowners who couldn't pay their mortgages for the housing crisis. And CNBC happens to represent the Wall Street media to most Americans. They cheered him to the high heavens like a Messiah that had come from the Gods.
CNBC simply didn't practice real journalism during the entire sub-prime mortgage crisis and traded in their journalistic integrity because profits were good and the ideology of most on the shows and reporters was geared towards free market capitalism that should never be regulated. There were a few appearances by guests who tried to warn the Kudlow's of the impending doom, but they were practically laughed off the set on opinion shows which featured the infamous: Decagon.
The Daily Show has about 23 minutes or so and uses usually the last third of the show for interviews. Carlson complains that he gave a puff interview with Obama, but he doesn't mention that John McCain was one of his most frequent guests and most of the time he played very nice with him too. But that doesn't count. He has Bill Kristol on every few months and they make him appear a lot of the time look like a normal person with sound ideas, but that doesn't count. No, Jon Stewart is a partisan hack.
I could go on and on taking his rubbish apart, but since he tells you a behind-the-scenes story about Stewart -- after he ripped Crossfire a new one -- I'll tell you a similar little story about Tucker. I met him in the green room of Bill Maher's Real Time on October 21, 2005. I went with Arianna Huffington during the Valerie Plame scandal and he was one of the guest panelists. We met and talked for about 15 minutes about trivial things. The way you do with people you meet for the first time.
He knew my blog when I told him what I did and he complimented me on it. As he talked about California, I was stunned that he was acting like a nice, normal guy too. A charming man who was not a Republican, but simply an ideologue with principles, and he was very friendly. Then it was time for the show to start and he went onstage and acted like a jerk for the entire show. He came back into the green room and said, "That was fun." I was like, "What did you turn into, dude?" He left stage right.
