Above is a clip from last night's already legendary Jon Stewart interview with Jim Cramer. Unfortunately they cut if off right at the emotional climax of the show, you have to watch part 3 on the interview to get the pay off.
This morning on the Diane Rehm Show Andrew Sullivan, Jeanne Cummings, a reporter from Politico, and John Dickerson, chief political correspondent for Slate.com, discussed the interview. Sullivan called it a "cultural watershed." Cummings called it a "remarkable exchange." Sullivan related it to the social forces being unleashed by the current economic depression which he summed as – people are sick of the games. He said this interview represented a "storming of the Bastille." The economic bubble bursting has led people to reexamine their priorities and beliefs with a critical eye. When it comes to the economy people are sick of the "fake economy" touted on networks like CNBC, because they know the real economy in their own lives. People now know the games that are being played in the backrooms and want them to stop. Stewart hammered this point home and took Cramer to task.
The commentators moved on to talk about how these social forces are also being felt in other arenas as well. Dickerson compared Stewart's critique of economic journalism with journalism's broader loss of credibility as exemplified by the lead up to the Iraq war. And then Sullivan brought it back to the week's big story (at least around here): Chas Freeman. Freeman was again business as usual – but the difference this time was that blogs brought it out in the open. In the same way Stewart, not CNBC or Bloomberg, was willing to say what everyone was thinking about the economy, it was the non-mainstream media that fought the Freeman fight. The Times and Post only picked it up after the fact.
This has led me to wonder – has the bubble also burst on the Israel lobby? Will the visceral anger that Stewart showed Cramer soon be turned on US foreign policy in a grand Howard Beale moment? The commentators on Rehm's show said that when it comes to Israel (like the economy) the major media is too close to the game. The real coverage of Israel/Palestine is going to have to come from elsewhere.
Freeman was just an inkling of this, not a full "Cramer-esque" take down, but signs of a gathering storm. Like the economy, the back room games of how US foreign policy is crafted is increasingly out in the light. Many have already commented how Freeman is a net loss for the lobby because the fight was in the public. AIPAC's own reluctance to be publicly associated with the anti-Freeman campaign is because they realize that their games only work behind closed doors. They know that once their goals and influence are exposed it's only a matter of time before people will "want their heads."
