Comments on: Stewart v. McArdle

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:32:16 +0000

John, I acknowledged her libertarian bent. I find her to conservative for my taste. If you do not like my “conversation” it’s simple, stay out of it.

By: John

John — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:14:30 +0000

Bob: Megan McArdle is a libertarian, not a conservative. If you can’t see the difference (here’s a hint: there’s more than one dimension on which one can be or not be “right of center”), this isn’t a conversation you need to be having.

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 01:23:18 +0000

Matako asserts, “Megan is a conservative and she is exhibiting a common conservative failing….the idea that some things or some people should not be mocked….” John, without a shred of “nuance,” declares “FAIL.” E.D. ignores John’s “lack of nuance” but informs Matako, “A lack of nuance is no virtue.”

I’m not really sure what point John sees as failure but I’m going to agree with the “Megan is a conservative….” portion of the statement. McCardle’s libertarian economic views, her distaste of government, the bashing of Paul Krugman’s views, are clearly right of center, IMHO, way right to me. So with an excess of nuance I see no problem with Matako’s point of view. By my lights McCardle is conservative, we are on a continuum here after all. I guess it all depends on where the “center” is placed.

Once upon a time someone named Freddie responded to one of McCardles attacks on Krugman by writing, “As far as Bush-bashing goes, well, I suppose Krugman would say (and his supporters say) that he’s just been forced to speak by the incredibly awful presidency of George W. I do understand that Bush-bashing can get a little boring, but it’s hard to imagine objective criteria by which this administration has NOT failed. When you’ve got that much fuel, you might as well start a fire.” Posted by Freddie | September 5, 2007 2:35 PM

And E.D., remember Shakespeare’s admonition, “…brevity is the soul of wit….”

By: E.D. Kain

E.D. Kain — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:50:21 +0000

Matako, your failing is your incessant need to simplify and label everything. A lack of nuance is no virtue. A need to box everything into perfect little categories does everything you speak of a disservice. Funny you should use Southpark in your example, a rather conservative/libertarian show – that suffers not one tiny bit from a lack of mockery. Hmmm…

By: John

John — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:31:29 +0000

Megan is a conservative …

Matoko FAIL.

By: matoko_chan

matoko_chan — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:52:58 +0000

Megan is a conservative and she is exhibiting a common conservative failing….the idea that some things or some people should not be mocked, eg God, Sarah Palin, Bush, the econopalypse, religious belief, etc. etc.
In defense of mockery, I offer the purity of the First Law of South Park–

Either it is all ok to make fun of, or none of it is.
–Kyle

By: Steven Donegal

Steven Donegal — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 05:37:24 +0000

McArdle is off base. Stewart’s first bit wasn’t an attack on Cramer per se–he was annoyed that Santelli didn’t show and see he went after CNBC. Was it unfair? Of course it was, but it was also funny. If CNBC had just shut the hell up, the whole thing would have been over. But seeing a chance to jack his ratings, Cramer goes on the morning shows and takes shots at Stewart. So Stewart shoots back. At this point, it’s still entertainment–except that Stewart is a lot funnier. But when Cramer goes on the show, Stewart does exactly what McArdle or any other mainstream media type won’t do–he takes on Cramer on the merits. There were no out of context clips; no juxtapositions of contradictory statements. Stewart called him out and Cramer couldn’t defend himself. If Cramer wants to keep his act, great. But it’s not journalism, financial or otherwise–it’s all showmanship.

By: E.D. Kain

E.D. Kain — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 04:14:11 +0000

I’ll grant you that, John. I guess the question for me now becomes, was Stewart actually using quotes and clips out of context? I see where this sort of thing is gimmicky but whether those quotes were really “out of context” is certainly not proven anywhere in Megan’s post. It’s not apparent to me at all that anything said or shown was really anything more than a sampling. In any case, off to your post….

By: Mere Comments « Upturned Earth

Mere Comments « Upturned Earth — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:10:29 +0000

[...] still find me spouting off in a couple of comboxes: discussing free trade with Daniel Larison, and Stewart v. Cramer and journalistic ethics with E.D. [...]

By: John

John — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:06:49 +0000

Okay, so it may be that McArdle's view of this is unduly colored by the fact that two of her co-bloggers have been among Stewart's biggest (and most serious-taking) cheerleaders. But it seems to me that the crucial part of her argument comes in this early paragraph, which I don't think you quoted:

... the Jon Stewart video that touched this off was clearly misleading. I do watch these channels, not for the interview but for the tickers and the breaking financial news. And it was obvious from the clips that half of them were anchors and reporters simply quoting someone else--it's the equivalent of dinging someone for using a racial epithet in the context of discussing racial epithets.

If this is true, then at the very least all those people - and it's certainly not just Sullivan and Fallows - who've been going around and whooping about how CNBC got pwn3d ought to take a moment's pause and reevaluate what they're saying. Maybe it's true, though, that the charge that Stewart is "making powerful statements, and then when he gets called on him [sic], retreating into the claim that well, you can't really expect him to act as if he were being taken seriously" isn't fair in this particular context - the idea would be that it's really his supporters who are playing this game, taking his claims more seriously than they deserve and then playing the comedy card in the face of criticisms. But Megan also says this:

I'm very sympathetic to Stewart's deep critique of financial shows, but I don't think the way to go about it was to string together a bunch of very misleading clips.

The deeper point, in other words, is also that Stewart could really be doing the sort of genuine public service that his supporters attribute to him; financial cable news is a load of crap, and so having somebody with a platform like Stewart's taking an axe to it is a great thing. The problem is that he can't do this effectively if he insists on being misleading along the way: not that it's impossible to be both an entertainer and a serious analyst, but that if you're going to wear both hats - and again, are you really going to argue that Stewart isn't trying to do this? - you need to be an entertainer with journalistic standards: trashing CNBC is like shooting fish in a barrel, so why should it require making stuff up? Hence you write:

So, to the first point, I’d say that even if TDS used clips and quotes out of context, they were nevertheless making a larger point that the media in general and CNBC in particular were not doing very responsible journalism.

Again, though, Megan's point is that the way to do this isn't by doing irresponsible journalism of your own, and indeed that framing his critique in the way he did ultimately made Stewart less effective. Does that mean that he had to go "in depth"? Of course not; nobody would watch him if he did. If you want to make a substantive point, though, better to do it in the most honest way possible - and this holds several times over, of course, if the substantive point you're trying to make has to do with the importance of careful and honest journalism.