Someone earlier got it right: The Stewart/Cramer dustup is 100% about Obama and not in the least bit about the economy.
Stewart has his head so far up Obama’s ass that he will gladly throw any fellow devoted Democrat (like Cramer) under the bus for daring to level a modicum of scrutiny over anything the Prez does.
The best analysis I read about what has become of Stewart and The Daily Show was a commenter on Megan McArdle’s article on this topic at The Atlantic:
(I agree with this. And no, I’m not a Republican)
…I’ve watched The Daily Show (TDS) from the beginning—all the way back in the Craig Kilborn years. At the beginning, and running into perhaps 2002, the purpose of the show was to poke holes in the overly serious and contradictory news cycle; it was a gasser and a laugh, using real stories. And, what is more, it sought to be an equal opportunity offender, and was comedy.
Since then (2002, but could be later), the show has taken a decidedly partisan liberal slant, and has deliberately tried to shape opinion of the world. Stewart uses serious knocks and attacks for Republicans and kid glove jokes for Democrats. When the Colbert Report was spawned, it was official: Stewart and Co. are in the business of promoting their left-wing agenda.
The problem is Stewart is reporting the news to the audience, as one famous tag line of the show said, “Where more people get their news…than they probably should.” He stands there and pretends to be an unbiased clown merely regurgitating the AP stories and making silly faces. But anyone witnessing his attacks on Bush, et al. sees soemthing more.
No where is this more apparent than in the interview portions, where Stewart goes off script and palpably asserts his believes and condescends to those right-wingers he doesn’t agree with. Off script, he’s nastier and mroe obvious.
As Megan points out, Stewart is a coward, because when confronted, he tries to hide behind the “oh, I’m just a silly comedian” routine. Except that people take hims eriously; what he mocks, they mock, and more importantly, what he does not mock, they do not mock.
Take Obama’s Jeremiah Wright speech I, when he claimed he coud never disown his racist lunatic leader (which he later did….). The speech was an obvious political weasel speech. it was prime fodder.
but did Stewart mock it? No, he claimed the speech was “a politician talking to Americans like adluts about race.” It was obvious that Stewart was in the tank for Obama and would now be using his agenda to push his campaign forward.
Stewart is a hypocrite, a liar, and a coward. He’s a hypocrite because he decries the nasty nature of talking heads and politics (witness his famous Crossfire attack) and yet he revels in being a snippy, snarky talking head. He’s a liar because when confronted with his agenda and his power, he claims he’s just making fun of things and nothing more. And he’s a coward because he tries to hide behind the shield of “just a comedian” and yet lobs bombs at everyone else.
