Regarding the now-famous Stewart/Cramer 'interview' qua thrashing:
Was Stewart being unfair to Cramer, in not applying his humor to the interview but instead playing it straight? Perhaps, if Cramer was brought onto the show with the understanding that it would be light and funny. If there were false pretenses given, then it could be seen as an unfair setup. If anyone has any insight or knowledge about that, I'd like to know.
However, there was bad blood building all week between the two. And Stewart is known for his occasional burst of serious outrage, such as on CNN several years ago, and just occasionally on his show. So if no assurances were given before the show, then Cramer perhaps should have known better than go on, if he didn't want to be embarrassed. And he was embarrasssed.
Humilitiated is a better word perhaps. It made me think that perhaps Cramer is Catholic and was treating this as a confessional experience, with his silence and passivity a kind of penance he had to pay.
It was hard to watch and heart-warming at the same time. Right or wrong, Cramer was the stand-in for all the Wall Street rich guys who had a hand in bringing this crisis on, and Stewart was the avenger for all the rest of us who have lost so much. It was, believe me, a very mild form of punishment for the damage they have done. In earlier times, the peasants might have had his severed head on the end of a pike.
Update: Jim Cramer is definitely Jewish, not Catholic, which may be why the very Jewish Jon Stewart felt more comfortable going after him like a scolding Jewish mother.
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