Jon Stewart vs. the Liberal Media

Conservatives take it as a given that the media is stacked against them. So why has Jon Stewart become the most effective media critic of our time?

He's a bleeding heart liberal. Surely he has no problem with the drive-by media?

(I'm not even bothering with quote marks for this post.)

Stewart's thorough whipping of Jim Cramer this week is another example of why the myth of a liberal media is becoming less believable every day.

Cramer, and his network CNBC, have been exposed as cheerleaders of the worst excesses of capitalism, the inflated, bubble-mentality that has driven this country to its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. They've been out there, defending unregulated capitalism at every chance, waving their arms, shouting "Buy, Buy!" and basically behaving like idiots.

Stewart is just about the only person who has called them on it, and he is right to do so. And it may just be that because he is ostensibly a comedian, he is the only person who *can* call them on it. After all, it's not liberalism that drives our media. It's money. The networks, the newspapers--they are businesses at heart. They are run by businessmen, not political ideologues. (Well, with the exception of Fox, which is run by a fella who is both.)

And calling into question the basic foundations of modern capitalism (which one could argue is failing as spectacularly as communism failed in the 80s) is not something that has been good for business. Journalists, for the most part, have just not gone there.

Satirists like Stewart and Colbert have done a much better job of questioning the status quo. As it turns out, the status is not quo. (I love that line) The emperor, to borrow another line, has no clothes. The parrot has ceased to be. Bereft of life ...

Uh, I got a little lost there. Anyhow, Stewart, time and time again, shows us a media that does not question the status quo, does not really educate or inform, and does not provide any discernible public service, unless you count division and fear as public goods. There's liberal media, there's conservative media, and there's bad media. In the past decade or so, we have been treated mostly to the last of those three.