Bush is “a man who thinks in grand words made up of few letters..”
So said conservative magazine editor James Poulos according to Charles Homan’s new article in the Washington Monthly on Culture11.
Category: Humor
Daniel Drezner shares some gallows humor from a Financial Times employee:
[H]e described his niche as, “being in one industry that’s fucked writing about another industry that’s fucked.”
Drezner had asterisks in place of the “uck” though.
[digg-reddit-me]Eliot Spitzer, in what is becoming a must-read column for Slate, gets to the nub of the real scandal of AIG:
The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.
As I’ve quoted former Governor William Weld before:
There’s no one so brave and wise as the politician who’s not running for office and who’s not going to be…
Yet it is almost as likely that former Governor Eliot Spitzer is following an alternate path that seems similar but has a different conclusion. Let me propose a corollary to Weld’s statement:
A bit braver and a little less wise than the politician who’s not running for office and who’s not going to be is the chastened politician who seeks redemption in the form of speaking truth to power from his exile until he has established his moral bona fides enough to be allowed back in.
A bit less snappy though. Meanwhile, Jay Leno has his own suggestion for how to deal with the AIG bonus issue (the one that Spitzer points out is a side issue):
You have to appreciate the subtle balance Jay manages here – and the craft and delicate political sensibility that goes into a joke like this. Aiming for a mass audience, he can’t offend either Democrats or Republicans. Yet a political joke that is offensive to no one just isn’t funny. So Jay manages to cram two alternate jokes into one – with one interpretation for Democrats and the other for Republicans, and a certain cognitive dissonance allowing both interpretations.
On a superficial level, Leno is chastising the Obama administration and saying that it should emulate the Bush administration.
But he undermines this suggestion by invoking as a fact – which it is, even if the mainstream media does not often acknowledge it – the lawlessness of the Bush administration – and perhaps even mocking their oft-used Jack Bauer defense.
Yet on another level, what he is proposing – that Obama just forget the law and go after AIG – has a certain elemental satisfaction to it – and would probably be a popular move. There would be a catharsis there, instead of the interminable responsibility of the Obama administration.
As I mentioned above – there is a certain craft to this. Often, Leno’s monologues are seen as without edge but when they work, they allow multiple edges such as this joke does.
As a side note to all of this – once something becomes the premise of a joke by Jay Leno, you know it has been popularly accepted as true – or true enough. The fact that the premise of this joke was Bush administration lawlessness is pretty significant in that regard.
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I have to admit – I had my doubts about Fallon as a late night host – but he seems to be off to a good start – not least of all with this.
Best non-Jon-Stewart take on this weeks events I’ve seen.
[digg-reddit-me]Isn’t that what Jim Cramer does on every show, you might ask? That’s a fair point.
But what if Jim Cramer has now decided that he will dedicate himself to defeating Barack Obama’s agenda, declared himself to be on the “White House enemies list;” and that what he is doing now is what he has done all along – to “fight to help viewers and readers make and preserve capital.” That’s what I call jumping the shark. Bad investment advice is what Cramer does entertainingly. But this sense of self-grandiousity – and his seeming demand to be taken seriously instead of as a ridiculous figure. That’s too much.
The self-puffery is evident as Cramer insists he is on a “White House enemies list” (his source is the noted Democratic party insider Rush Limbaugh). Cramer thinks he is on this “list” because made an outrageous comment about White House policy being designed to destroy wealth and kill kittens, and when questioned about it, the White House press secretary pointed out that Mr. Cramer’s advice on how to create wealth wasn’t what the White House was looking for.
Cramer claims he has spent his career helping viewers and readers “preserve” their capital – and that his advice now to oppose Obama is just a continuance of that. So for a moment, let’s look at the fate of those who would have followed Cramer’s advice in the past. The Consumerist points out that if one had followed Jim Cramer’s stock-picking advice since 2000, you would have been better served by flipping a coin – as Jim Cramer’s advice is slightly worse than a coin toss.
This is also the guy who publicly advised his viewers on October 31, 2008 2007, just before the beginning of this stock market slide:
You should be buying things and accept that they are overvalued, but accept that they’re going to keep going higher. I know that sounds irresponsible, but that’s how you make the money. Right now, up is down, left is right, peace is war. [my emphasis]
Eric Tyson supplements this by describing some of Cramer’s more recent investment advice:
- Bear Stearns. Cramer recommended buying this stock on 8/17/07 at $118.20 per share. He lost 95 percent on this one – selling at just under $6 per share on 3/20/08.
- Morgan Stanley. Cramer recommended buying this stock on 9/15/06 at $70.95 per share. Its recently been trading in the mid-teens.
- Lehman Brothers. Cramer recommended this stock on 10/17/05 at $55.18 per share. On 9/5/08 with the stock trading at $16 per share, on CNBC, Cramer selected Lehman as a “screaming buy” and said things couldn’t get any worse for the company. The stock now trades at less than $1 per share for more than a 99 percent loss for Cramer.
- Merrill Lynch. Cramer recommended buying this stock on 9/19/05 at $60.17 per share and sold it on 9/12/08 for $17.05 per share for a 72 percent loss…
(And, by the way, Cramer recommended buying financial services giant AIG on 11/7/05 at $66.34 per share and the stock currently trades around $2 per share for a 97 percent loss.)
Given his history, it’s a bit rich of Jim Cramer to claim his career has been about “preserving” anything other than his own entertaining presence. If he meant to dedicate his life to “preserving the wealth of his viewers and readers,” clearly he’s been quite a miserable failure. In terms of sheer lunacy, on the other hand, he’s still got it.
But I, for one, am grateful the White House isn’t following the Jim Cramer guide to wealth creation. And for those of you that are – I might advise you invest in a solid coin to flip, as it would apparently serve you better.
[digg-reddit-me]Yesterday, I tried to take on some of the opposition to Obama’s handling of the financial crisis. I think I did a fine job – but I’m certainly no Jon Stewart. Pointing out that the stock market tanked after Ronald Reagan became president and after we won World War II, he takes on this farcical idea that the stock market is some sort of rational indicator of economic conditions:
(I’ll post full links when TDS posts them.)
The stock market isn’t a rational creature – it is subject to panics and irrational exuberance and sour moods and churlishness and massive misjudgments. To judge whether an economic plan is working or not requires time and wisdom – neither of which are found in the daily results of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Of course, Stewart founds some time to mock Rick Santelli on the way:
Humor makes it all go down so much easier.
There’s no denying the inchoate anger, not fully formed, matured, directed, or realized, that some seek to target Obama with. The problem is that these Santellis and these Limbaughs and the rest of them have no more to offer than the mythical Howard Beale of Network – whose famous rants clearly inspired Santelli’s on-air persona:
Watching this famous clip today is eerie – as it echoes into our own time – and makes Santelli’s performance seem all the more post-modern.
In the end, it comes down to this:
As a nation we have a choice to do nothing, to let Obama implement his plan, or to come up with a better one. In my opinion, Obama’s opponents have yet to offer a serious alternate plan. Which is why I’m sticking with him on this, at least for now.
Categories
Move Over Joe the Plumber…
[digg-reddit-me]And Mr. Dow 36,000. And Wall Street bankers. And Rush Limbaugh.
The media freak show now presents another person-Americans-love-to-hate-who-wants-to-take-on-Obama…
Tonya Harding!
(H/t Andrew Sullivan.)
Buzzfeed comments:
[P]rops to the ice princess for not changing her hair since 1992. Once a legend, always a legend.
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Such a perfect line. You have to admire the dryness of wit needed to pull this off.
Next time I’m arguing with someone invoking strawman arguments, I’m pulling this off the shelf.
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Edited to protect the identity of the innocent, and those somewhat less innocent.
[digg-reddit-me]Stephen Colbert lists Bill Gates as the number 4 threat on his Threatdown for the mosquito incident: