The Cat and the Mouse

I’d like to first preface what I write here by saying that I love John Stewart. I think he is as smart as he is funny. He and Stephen Colbert have forged new ground in television that will prove to be seminal in years to come in terms of comedy. But for those of you who watched the recent John-Stewart-vs-Jim-Cramer Debacle unfold, I have this to say.

I think John Stewart is being disingenuous.

At first, I applauded what he did to Cramer. Here, finally, was a voice speaking for the masses, angry and demanding answers. Stewart spoke for all of us and it was refreshing, bold and a much-needed voice in the wild.

But the more I thought about it, I realized there was a disconnect. Here’s the problem: we’re in a lot of trouble. Economically, speaking, we are looking at the next ten years as a lost decade. Our banks have failed us, our government has failed us, heck, our entire economic system has failed us. And yes, while some of us were culpable buying houses we couldn’t afford, most us played a hand in accruing debt that we couldn’t afford. But the lion’s share of the blame goes to the institutions we trusted with our money.

The current administration, under President Obama, has done a monumental job in the short time they have been in office in trying to fix what’s wrong. They have implemented new laws, passed giant stimulus bills and created a realistic budget for the years to come. I’m out of breath just talking about their accomplishments.

But will their plans work? There are plenty who think they will (certainly the administration seems confident) while others think they will not. No one knows for sure. What is certain is that there is a lot of confusion. I think it would be safe to say that only few understand what happened, few know what the plan is and few see what the future will bring. No one knows the full story.

And there’s an inherent danger in that. Because right now we are suffering from what I’m calling a Crisis of Confidence. Here’s how it breaks down. There is a battle taking place between the classes. The middle and lower classes are broke, tired and hurt. They are out of work, have seen their pensions disappear and their future looking bleak. They’re angry. And they have every right to be.

For years, the upper class has enacted a rape-and-pillage mentality to take as much money as they can from the lower class. In light of this, why would the middle and lower classes want to give these guys at AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and all the other failing financial institutions taxpayer money to get them out of the hole that they created? And then to hear that the executives in charge have the audacity to not even use the money to restructure their business, instead looting their new-found treasure chests of bail-out money and pocketing it for themselves.

Yeah…we’re pissed.

Now Obama comes along. He says, okay we’re gonna fix what’s wrong. Give money to those who deserve it and punish those who stole. That’s exactly what should be done. He comes up with a plan to fix the economy. He is, in no uncertain terms, changing the way we understand how capitalism works. “Capitalism will be different,” Geithner (who I like, by the way) said to Charlie Rose. That’s a good thing. That’s exactly what should happen. But yet, the market continues to plummet and the nay-sayers get their voices heard.

What festers here is the confusion. It has become exacerbated by the media. Media figures like Jim Cramer. With confusion comes a loss of confidence. With a loss of confidence comes a public unwilling to spend their money, borrow from the banks or buy new homes. When the money stops pouring in, the banks get nervous and stop lending. When the banks stop lending, the economy grinds to a halt.

And that’s where we find ourselves right now. The great Cramer vs Stewart comes at a crucial point in all of this. I agree with everything Stewart had to say to Cramer. I don’t know Cramer, I’ve never watched his show, but from what I’ve seen, he’s bombastic and loud and he puts on a show. Just like John Stewart does every night.

Stewart, whether he wants to admit it or not (he doesn’t) is part of mainstream media. He’s not real news, he’s fake news. But news nonetheless. It’s a modern way of knowing what’s going on. An entire generation looks to him (and to a lesser extent to Colbert) for their source of the news. Yes, it’s funnier when there are jokes thrown in for good measure, but that’s where a lot of people find out what’s going in the world. It’s foolish to think that most people who watch The Daily Show are watching because they’ve just watched the real news and now want to see it skewed. They don’t have to because Stewart does a good job of telling everyone what’s going on.

So, he is, in a very real sense, a news outlet. And so, he becomes a part of the media machine that creates the confusion that creates the loss of confidence in the market. So for him to single out Cramer for doing exactly what I spoke of, creating confusion, feels disingenuous. Stewart has always professed that ‘getting the laugh at any cost’ is the only objective to everything that’s done on The Daily Show, but what I felt while watching that interview was anger, shame and confusion. I didn’t once laugh. It was akin to watching a bully beat up a weakling or a cat toying with a mouse.

John Stewart spoke what we have wanted to hear spoken out loud. But he did that only because he knows he speaks for a generation. And that’s a great thing. We need more people like that. But he cannot run and hide behind the veil of comedy, under the guise of a jester. That it’s just a joke. It adds to the confusion.