Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Don't bring a knife to a gun fight...
I have to give the people over at the Daily Show a lot of credit. I really think most of our political elite do not really understand what it is, shows like the Daily Show and the Colbert Report do. They are not "fake news", they are media critiques. What they do is hold up a mirror to the venal nature of our modern day press.
What Stewart has done, is try to hold accountable people who say stupid things in the public square. Networks like CNBC, Fox Business, and Bloomberg have been cheerleaders during both the housing bubble, and the dot com bubble of the late 90s. Sort of a collective "cupping the balls" brigade for corporate interests.
Now the core of those networks audiences are those very same corporate interests, so it is not so hard to see, how they got in this position. But honestly why should we trust these peoples opinion when they have been so fabulously and spectacularly wrong.
I am not trying to intuit Mr. Stewart's motives, but I think it has less to do with personalities on these networks attacking President Obama, but instead Rick Santelli's rant against "losers" in society. Not even remotely noting the inherent irony of his statement (standing on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, venting about how helping the common man amounts to a moral hazard, but says nothing of the captains of industry who piloted our zepplin like economy into the side of a mountain. Surrounded by the very derivatives traders that have gotten us to our present point.). People who lose their home because they lost their jobs are losers. No matter how you got there, it is your fault it happened. On the other side, however, Wall Street and corporate America were just hapless victims of the housing bubble and a decrease in global demand.
I know I don't feel that way.
-Cheers
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