Do We Have To Send You Back To The Daily Show Again?

Here's Jim Cramer building and knocking down a straw man on one of NBC's multi-platform products this morning:

I think it was a naive and misleading thing to attack the media. We weren’t behind this. CNBC, in particular, has been out front on this. … I think there are people who bear so much more responsibility [than the media] that it’s just wrong-headed: the politicians, the regulators, the SEC, the lenders, the investment banks. … It’s just a naive focus, it really is Meredith.

I like the part where Cramer says he was taking "the high road" on the interview, to Jon Stewart's face, while calling him naive when he won't be faced with a rebuttal. Quite a man.

What is misleading and fallacious is the notion that Stewart believes the media are solely responsible for the meltdown. He's a media critic, making the media his focus. But of course, everyone understands the failure of regulators and the greed of executives. That would be, um, not the point of the critique, which is that CNBC has abdicated their responsibility to the viewer to make any sense of the meltdown. And Cramer brushes aside his admission of guilt from when, um, HE was one of those traders on the other side engaging in illegal activity.

On the Monday show, The Daily Show ran a segment about short selling. That was meant to run right before Cramer's appearance (he alludes to it, but they cut it when the interview went over). The segment focused on the actual traders involved in this. It actually featured Deep Capture creator Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com. So to say that Stewart is monomaniacally focused on the media's culpability is just wrong, and Cramer knows it.

Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson is concern trolling. Congrats, Tuckie, you got your name mentioned on the show!