Stewart Vs Cramer on Daily Show, march 12.

[Kevin]

Saw the episode a moment ago and my first impression is that Stewart must have been a journalism professor at some point. Second impression is that Cramer was truly nervous. The waver voice, his eyes averting, the nervous tick of his neck to the left. It seemed obvious to my wife & I that Cramer is not a man, despite his antics and high drama on TV, used to or comfortable with confrontation. The body language was so damning that even if he would have come back at Stewart with some good retorts he still would have lost the PR war. You're absolutely right, Hammerskjold, Cramer did the mea culpa thing a bit too much, and that combined with the body language reminded us of a 'tween' being scolded.

Some of the zingers Stewart had are still giving me pause,

~FragB)

While I don't disagree with you at all. I do have to say that Cramer is somewhat like that all the time. The waver in the voice especially. But you could see it in the clips that were run on the show and I've seen him in other things as well, even his own show. He just has a bit of natural "I'm scared" look and feel to him.

All that being said I still think your analysis was spot on. I had watched the whole week building up to it (a day or so late on each show since I have no cable/satellite T.V. and just watch it on Hulu) but didn't get to the see the interview till yesterday either. Cramer was worse that usual, even when you factor in his base state which makes him already looked nervous and scared.

Of course as Jon said, all week long, Cramer was just the face of it, he was not happy with the network as a whole and he is in some ways pining for the old days of broadcast news and the very early days of CNN when the news wasn't about ratings but about news and reporters and anchors did a better job of hiding their personal bias. Jon has been on that horse his whole career and it's often the angle he attacks news agencies with. We want to trust you, so give us a reason to and don't abuse us too much and we will be your sheep, it's not that hard. He often questions his "real" interview guests in a similar manner.

I've thought at times that I wish he were in "real" news but rapidly realized he couldn't do it and it would just eat him up too. I'll take him doing his fake news, and fighting his small causes in his own way. Yes, his goal is to entertain but he knows his platform has more power than that, and I feel he tries to use it about as much as he can with out abusing it. He'll stand up when he feels he needs to and that makes him all the more enjoyable to watch for me.