What a letdown. One of the jobs of a host is to listen to what the guest says and respond, not to launch pre-scripted volleys. What Jim Cramer said, repeatedly, is that he tries to do what Jon thinks that a financial program should do.
That wasn't good enough for Stewart, however; Jon indicates that Cramer is supposed to be responsible for the whole CNBC network. Does Stewart take responsibility for all the shows with misogynist comedy on Comedy Central? That seems unlikely.
The double-standard Stewart sets up is even worse than that, however. He repeatedly says that Cramer is responsible for covering a wider swath of news in Cramer's admittedly-entertaining program because Cramer's audience is just regular schmoes who don't know any better. But there are a zillion people, particularly teenagers, who get all their TV news from the Daily Show. Stewart doesn't seem to feel responsible for giving them a wider swath of news; you rarely see anything about difficult international topics on The Daily Show. Why should Cramer-the-entertainer be held to a different standard that Stewart-the-entertainer?
Update: Adnan Ali, someone whom I have never met, wrote a counterpiece to my posting. He and I disagree about the role of the news media in a democracy. To me, the news media is just political entertainment. Some people want to be entertained by one end of the spectrum or the other, but most want to be entertained by "factual" reporting from "the middle". Everyone watching a news show or reading the newsy part of the newspaper is just making a decision not to be watching a channel or reading a section of the newspaper more commonly associated with "entertainment".
And I disagree with Adnan that Stewart "was not indicating that Cramer is responsible for the whole CNBC network". Stewart said that, but his whole vocal and physical attitude said the opposite. The emails I have gotten from friends mostly agree with my view, and are all from people like me who want to like Stewart more and are just disappointed.
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