I think Cramer’s statement is telling about the entire American psyche today — we want to be entertained, not informed. We don’t even really care if our products work or not, as long as the ads are entertaining or it amuses us for a while, we’ll just throw it away and get a new toy then. We don’t care about our political system as long as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O Reilly and John Stewart feed our outrage. We don’t care if our food is good for us as long as it tastes good. Etc, etc….
“Listen, you knew what the banks were doing and yet were touting it for months and months,” said “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart to CNBC superstar Jim Cramer in their much-discussed confrontation last week. “The entire network was, and so now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.”
The applause Mr. Stewart has received for his j’accuse is the sound of the old order cracking. We have turned on the financial CEOs, inducting them one by one into the Predator Hall of Fame. We have gone deaf to the seductive rhythms of the culture wars. We have tossed out the politicians whose antigovernment rhetoric seemed invincible for so long.
And now comes the turn of the bubble-blowers of pop culture, the army of fake populists who have prospered for years by depicting the stock market as an expression of the general will, as the trustworthy friend of the little guy buffeted by a globalizing economy.
We know — or we think we know — about the roles played by other culprits in the debacle. The government regulators, for example: How could they have ignored the coming disaster? Well, they were incapacitated by decades of deregulation. What about the market’s own watchdogs? Well, from appraisers to ratings agencies the whole tough-minded system was apparently undermined by conflicts of interest.
But what about the syndicated columnists and the beloved stock pickers and the authors of personal finance best-sellers, the industry for which CNBC is the perfect symbol? How did they manage to miss the volcano under their feet?
Mr. Cramer, for his part, had the forthrightness to confess his errors and admit his limitations. “I’m not Eric Sevareid. I’m not Edward R. Murrow,” he pleaded. “I’m a guy trying to do an entertainment show about business for people to watch.”
6 Responses
Perfectly said!! Mom and I have been complaining about this problem for some time. We want information and they give us entertainment. Any ‘news’ is presented in as confrontational and/or sensational manner to generate ratings not enlightenment. And what information the media presents is sprinkled with more fluff than my clothes dryer’s catch basket on wash day. Utterly meaningless garbage.
Cramer is a kook with a shady past in the financial world, and undeserving of the attention he gets, unless it is negative attention.
Never listen to any of his nutcake investment advice.
This is but one example. The mainstream media is littered with countless others. From my perspective, the root of the problem has been the corporatization of news itself! The vast majority of reporters and pundits are in bed with the people and events they cover. They all share one worldview and that’s the only one they write and talk about.
T’was ever thus.
I doubt that the peasants who ploughed the fields in ancient China or Europe ever laboured under the delusion that they had any idea about why things happen in the greater world. It is true that we live in democracies, so the peasants have more influence. But we still have intrigues between court eunuchs and such that result in huge convulsions. There are some ordinary people who believe that they have to play the stock market, but I would suggest that it makes a lot more sense to invest in things that are more tangible—such as home insulation, paying off debts, and food in the pantry. If you have a lot of money, perhaps it would make more sense to invest in local businesses instead of handing your future over to someone you know nothing about and have never met eye-to-eye.
Agreeing with The Rambling Taoist and would add the mindlessness roaming the U.S. has been nourished by the failure of public education. That’s why I cannot get too upset by the demise of major newspapers. On the one hand, I continue to enjoy the pretense of finding content in the NY Times, on the other, I could easily let go of my disappointment at how little it offers.
Well, considering my brother and niece work on a newspaper in Colorado, I get upset about the demise of newspapers. My brother is the water editor for the Pueblo Chieftain, and one of the main sources for people on what’s happening with the very important issue of water in Colorado and the other Western states, which is absolutely critical to our future.
It isn’t the financial failure of the papers that is the sole issue, it is that they are still the major source of our news and of good reporting. We need to find some model where they will succeed in some form, whether printed or electronic.