Daily Show Slap-down: Bigger and Better than anything you will ever see on WWE

Amidst all the financial turmoil and the daily news of rising unemployment rates, slowing trade and the ever present spectre of a global depression I have to say Michael Franti and Spearhead had it right in his song Bomb the World when he sang, with great prescience, in 2003:

No one listened for years
But like, "who put us here?"
And who's responsible?
Well, there's no debatin'
Cause if they ask me I say
It's big corporations
World trade organisation
Tri-lateral action
International sanctions, Satan

The rest of us seem to have belatedly cottoned on to the manner in which criminals like Bernie Madoff have operated We yelled and cried at the excesses of the big corporations and the way in which companies could close their operations and default on the pension entitlements of their workers, while still keeping the lucrative annual bonuses for the executives. Even after AIG was bailed out to the tune of $170 billion it seems clear that the message has not filtered through to the company that they have to change the way that they do business. Last week it came to light that the company was planning to honour the payment of bonuses for their executives, which would come in at around $165 million!!! To add insult to injury it emerged that the bonuses are for the staff within the same derivatives trading unit that was responsible in large part for the company needing to go cap in hand to the American people for money. In response to the howls of outrage the company replied dead-pan that it had to honour contractual obligations and that it was required for the company to retain the best and the brightest talent in the industry!!! Those are their words exactly – “the best and brightest talent”, which strikes me as somewhere far beyond unbelievable. As postings on the Huffington Post make it clear the AIG arguments are fallacious on several counts. Robert Creamer comments that

And just imagine how protestations from AIG's CEO about its "contractual obligations" sounded to UAW workers who are being asked once again to modify their contractual agreements to keep the auto industry in business. But the titans of the financial sector seem to have very different standards for themselves and the rest of the American economy.

Creamer continues

Now the CEO of AIG has the audacity to argue that it has to pay bonuses because, if AIG loses it best employees, it would be harder for the company to recover and help the government recoup its investment. These are the best and the brightest? Could the gang in the financial products division of AIG done any worse? They helped precipitate the worst economic collapse in more than half a century.

(see the Creamer article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/aig-bonus-scandal-spotlig_b_175124.html)

The reportage of the AIG excesses got even worse with one show reporting that soon after the second government bail out the executives had been treated to an all expenses paid $88 000 English hunt weekend. Little wonder that Obama weighed into the fray yesterday, stating that “This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed," The Prez then went on to promise that his administration would use every legal avenue available to them to recover the unwarranted bonus payments. The problem that has been raised is that these bonuses were already promised in April last before the Federal Reserve (apparently independent of Congress) authorized the first bail-out payments. The gist of that is the belief that there is a legally binding contract between AIG and the imbeciles who got it into this mess. One new option being circulated in response to this is that the US Government (which now owns 80% of the company) should exercise its muscle as the owner of the company. It will be interesting to see what happens. Americans are appalled by the naked greed of the AIG staff, but are also (according to some commentators like Robert Reich) wary of any sort of government ownership. You have to wonder does the paranoia of the McCarthy era still linger, like the bad smell in an elevator?

But the real news of the last week or so happened with the show down on the Daily Show between two popular tv pundits. So, ladies and gentlemen, in the blue corner is Jon Stewart from the Daily Show (blue because he is a staunch supporter of the Obama camp but confusing because he’s also the lefty that the Republicans hate, and we all know that red is the colour of …communism!!) You may have heard me mention the Daily Show and its host, Jon Stewart, in previous blogs. Along with the Stephen Colbert show, Stewart consistently presents hilarious piss-takes on US society and particularly the Republicans. While Colbert poses as a raging right-wing conservative as a vehicle to satirise the…right wing conservatives….Stewart wears his liberal tendencies on his sleeve while delivering his lines like a naughty schoolboy who has just told a smutty joke. In the red corner (which should be the green corner, to represent money and unbridled greed) was the tv money adviser Cramer. In response to the thought forming in your head, no it is not Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld, but you would be excused for thinking that there is a more than passing familial resemblance there. Cramer’s Mad Money Show is characterized by his bouncing around the set, giving answers to callers on what to buy and sell, all the time to the sound of him beeping horns or setting off other strange sound effects.

Last week a slanging match developed between Stewart and Cramer after Jon Stewart took the financial advisers at CNBC, and Cramer in particular, to task for fuelling the fires of the economic melt-down. In response to the comments Cramer was dismissive of Stewart as an “entertainer”, but Stewart was persistent, airing footage of Cramer repeatedly espousing the virtues of the Bear Stearns stock even as it tanked and went south. One line that I particularly liked from Stewart was that he would be a millionaire if he had have followed Jim Cramer’s Mad Money advice – if he had started with a hundred million dollars! After a week of shadow boxing in the media (with Cramer even appearing on Martha Stewart’s show to put his case) it was finally agreed that the two would square off on Stewart’s show. It was touted with all the hoopla of a World Wrestling slap down. The fight went the distance, but it was a fizzer with the press the next day universally declaring Stewart to be the winner. For his part Stewart eschewed his charming, smarmy, schoolboy pranks to go after Cramer, insisting that he (and the CNBC financial shows) had misled the American population and that many people had lost money as a direct result of following his advice. One key to understanding Stewart’s righteous indignation was the report that his parents had lost a substantial part of the value of their 401K scheme (the US superannuation) scheme. A remarkably contrite Cramer, perhaps further chastened by footage of him that Stewart had dug up from a couple of years earlier recounting gleefully how the market could be manipulated to advantage, agreed that they could have done a better job. He did stop short of a mea culpa and the whole exchange was riveting but very uncomfortable to watch.

It led me to wonder why this show – which wasn’t vintage Stewart – had still managed to attract one of the highest ever audiences for the Comedy Central channel? It was perhaps a tad unfair to make Cramer the face of the unscrupulous and greedy Wall Street types. Admittedly there was an admission from Cramer that he had given advice based upon assurances from the CEOs of companies that were later to go to the wall. Clearly there was not distance between the financial “experts” and the financial sector to ensure impartiality and independence. Yet on another level Stewart’s slap down of Cramer was like watching a deer in the headlights of a semi-trailer. I almost felt some pity for him. Clearly Stewart has touched a responsive chord with the American people who were (and continue to be) right royally screwed over by the financial giants like AIG. Someone has to be made accountable and perhaps Cramer was the Wicker Man who had to be sacrificed. For those of you not familiar with the Wicker Man it is a film that centers a around the alleged murder of a young girl on an isolated Scottish island. The Wicker Man is a huge wood sculpture that is set ablaze at the end of a pagan celebration. The plot revelation is that the detective has been lured to the island and that the girl hasn’t died at all (look away now if you don’t want me to spoil the ending). In the end the detective is sacrificed in the Wicker Man funeral pyre to appease the gods and ensure that the apple harvest will not fail a second time. A long winded analogy but perhaps the American public needed a sacrifice, some sort of punching bag, when they know that the Bernie Madoffs of the world, and the faceless AIG executives will continue to be largely unscathed and, even worse, show no contrition for their excesses. Litigation spanning years and the anonymity of the criminals is all frustrating to the middle America at risk of losing their jobs, health insurance and homes. So I think Jon Stewart’s role as the unmasked avenger can perhaps be seen in light of the lines of the Paul Kelly song that soothe us with the assurance that:

They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn
And in the hour of greatest slaughter the great avenger is being born.

If Obama is going to turn the US economy (and nation) around then he possibly needs people like Jon Stewart riding shot-gun. Stewart’s Robin, to Obama’s Batman makes perfect sense to me. We need new super-heroes, the Watchmen for the new millennium…hmm who else can we recruit?


(P.S. The Daily show episode featuring the face off is here:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=221516&title=jim-cramer-unedited-interview


(P.P.S. If you are intrigued by the Wicker Man plot for heaven’s sake don’t go with the awful Nicholas Cage re-make. There is only one version, starring Edward Woodward from 1973, that is worth watching. Beware of imitations!)

Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep

This week was notable for the fact that the internet turned twenty. It is amazing to think how it has transformed how we access information, communicate – even carry out the day to day activities of online banking (or Facebook or online gaming, to be perfectly honest). It is a measure of how profoundly that the new technologies have changed the world in that the Pope called on the faithful to give up text messaging, computer games and social networking sites (like…gasp…Facebook) for Lent. As one wag commented the reach of these new technologies can be gauged from the fact that the directive from Pope Benny probably came through the papal website.

While I have never felt at ease with cell…I mean mobile (sorry Neil) phones, the lure of the ipod is like a siren song for me. It doesn’t matter that you feel slightly drone-ish traveling in a bus with everyone wired to ipods. Then again, if Obama is so smitten with his Blackberry maybe it is time for me to reconsider on that front…hmmm

Similarly, after initial resistance, Facebook has drawn me into its thrall…and I am finding it a wonderful way to communicate with everyone around the world. For all its narcissistic overtones, blogging also strikes me as a better form of release than bending the ear of another drunk at a bar (with less prospect of being punched in the nose too). But my connection with these new technologies is leaving me feeling increasingly conflicted and the battle-lines have been drawn (or at least the boundary has been defined) with the issue of “twittering”.

I am not really sure about it so I will shamelessly cite from wikipedia (which I am always telling my students not to do) to tell you that:

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default).

So twittering can take place via SMS or the twitter web-site or other applications, allowing you to shoot out one or two sentence messages to all and sundry from the cell phone or on the web (oops…sorry I meant mobile). Sort of like a group email that lets your friends, or anyone on your subscription list, know what you are doing at any particular moment. It is aptly titled “micro-blogging” and works around the simple question of “What are you doing now?”. I suppose it is not dissimilar to having constant up-dates from your profile page on facebook.

. Given that I have embraced both Facebook and blogging, my aversion to ‘twittering” is perhaps somewhat hypocritical. It has certainly been embraced by all manner of unexpected bodies and individuals. I went to the home page of the University of California San Diego the other day and was gob-smacked to see that you can sign up for news of UCSD activities on their twitter site. Even the dinosaurs of the Republican Party appear to have taken to the new mode of communication. This was all the more surprising that McCain had to admit during the last presidential campaign that his wife took care of his email and internet communications. But there you are, in this new era the member of Congress with the most followers for their twittering is…the Senator from Arizona. So, come on down…John McCain. He does concede, to be fair, that he gets some assistance with his pearls of wisdom. An article from Chris Lefkow of AFP observes:

The 72-year-old McCain is an infrequent Twitterer and acknowledges getting a little assistance. "YEs!! I am twittering on my blackberry but not without a little help!" read one recent message.

McCain's missives range from dismay over a rash of injuries to members of his hometown NBA team, the Phoenix Suns -- "steve nash hurt? amare too! what now for the suns!" -- to concern over spending in the economic stimulus bill. "$650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi - how does one manage a beaver?" he asked.

In the aftermath of the Obama address to Congress one of the intriguing tidbits that came to light was the fact that the chamber had been alive to the sound of twittering (sort of like the Julie Andrews tune from “The Sound of Music”). And many of the members were caught out with their excessive (and, one might offer, inane) “twittering”. One Democrat was reportedly chastised by her mother for twittering during the President’s speech while Texas Republican Joe Barton grumpily observed that there was a basketball game about to start on the espn2 channel “for those of you that aren’t going to bother watching Pelosi smirk for the next hour” in reference to the Democrat Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. The sudden realization that this was posted for all the world to see (as we would have said in high school “Der Fred”) led to a rapid retraction with the disclaimer: "Disregard that last tweet from a staffer."
So what do I have against twittering? Well it seems to be so limited and limiting. An article that I saw about it made the point that people are so being twittering about what they are doing that they are not actually in the moment. It is a form of (further) disengagement from actual personal relations to a form that is mediated through electronic media. Railing against twitter is, of course, ultimately futile. Sort of like King Canute ordering back the tide. It does leave me wondering, however, whether it will sound the death knell for written letters as a form of communication. It is not just the limited range of communication that twitter implies – as if the world has dumbed down to an MTV generation vision of the attention span of one pop song – because there is still the possibility to have more expansive and detailed communication through email. But I fear that it will mean that future generations won’t have that pile of letters from parents, family and lovers that are tied up in ribbon or kept in a shoe-box and when they are opened they are like breathing in the essence of another time and place. Printing out the emails and keeping them isn’t the same either for there is something personal about the handwritten letter. I will admit to being one of the worst when it comes to my scrawled hieroglyphics. I look at the beautifully formed letters of my mother’s hand writing or the cursive (perhaps copperplate) of my father and I am envious that I didn’t persevere long enough to master a beautiful script. When I make notes for my teaching class I more often than not finding myself squinting (and not just because I refuse to wear my glasses) trying to make out the illegible scratching on the paper. While it appears to be a dying craft I was interested to see a recent episode of the NPR show “A way with words” was talking about a book titled Script and Scribble: the Rise and Fall of Handwriting (see the show which deals with the origins of local or family sayings at http://www.waywordradio.org/)
But it is not a generational thing. In that show they actually commented that Superman…I mean President…Obama actually has very beautiful handwriting. And of course this blog is shameless in its support of Obama. Apparently he left a handwritten note at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem during a visit in July of last year. The note was promptly retrieved and copied by the press and there was universal acceptance that he had a very nice writing script.
So it is not just about what we can say in the new technology, the content, but the fact that we will lose that art of penmanship. It struck me as apt when I first heard of twitter that I remembered a song from my teenage years by a group called Middle of the Road called….Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep. The song’s perceptive lyrics go something like this:

Last night, I heard my mama singing a song
Ooh-We, Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep, Cheep
Woke up this morning and my mama was gone
Ooh-We, Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep, Cheep
Chirpy, Chirpy

The lyrics (I use the term loosely) sum up for me the shallowness, the absence of any aesthetic pleasure, which twitter represents. But, just like the song Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep that gets stuck in your head (I challenge you to listen to it and not be humming it for the rest of the day) so it is that twitter will get stuck in the head. Apparently those songs that get stuck in the head create a cognitive or brain itch (the Germans call it ohrwurm, or earworm). Of course the only way to scratch the itch is by constant humming or, in the case of twitter, by…twittering!!! But I refuse to accept that resistance is futile, so I am going to go now and dust off my fountain pen, find some ink and start writing you all letters. Which is not to say you will be able to make out a single word I write, but it’s my form of silent resistance.