Blame the Entertainer? – Garrick van Buren

I was baffled by uproar from the Stewart v. Cramer bit a few days ago. I got the sense that I misunderstood what Cramer did on his show (attempt to time the stock market). Stewart made it seem like Cramer was driving the ambulance, rather than simply chasing it.

Then I remembered that Stewart’s show “followed sock puppets making prank calls” and Stewart’s show, Cramer’s show, like online dating is a great percentage of pure, value-free, entertainment.

Why CNBC should inherently be considered any more or less credible than Comedy Central is really the pre-requisite question to ask.

“If you want a television host, or network, to blame all of our troubles on, you’d do better to cast your ire on Home and Garden Television, and Flip This House. They’re the ones who told Americans, over and over and over and over, that it was possible to get rich by installing granite countertops.” – Megan Ardle

One reply on “Blame the Entertainer?”

Christopher Monnier says:

March 17, 2009 at 9:15 pm

I was sort of on the “Jon Stewart is awesome Cramer is stupid” bandwagon” until I read Megan’s post. CNBC, however lax their journalism, didn’t cause the financial crisis. Better jorunalism would have exposed the insanity earlier, but it’s probably foolish to expect Cramer’s obviously over-the-top show to have played this role.

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