In a clip from March 10th, Joe Scarborough stepped up to defend fellow CNBC personality Jim Cramer. Well, not so much defend him as cut down Jon Stewart and the staff of The Daily Show. In a typically Scarborough display of laziness and dishonesty, however, he made a lot of claims that just weren't true.
"When George W. Bush was president he spoke truth to power. Now that Barack Obama is president, suddenly nothing is funny." Scarborough is a smart man, so the obvious question here is whether he's lying or just that blind to the facts.
March 9th, the night before Scarborough's comments, Stewart took several cracks at Obama for the strange, foolish gift given to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as well as his decision to invite many musical guests to the Whitehouse, as if to simply satisfy his own celebrity. These are just a few examples of many.
It is nice, however, to hear the admission that Jon Stewart speaks truth to power. That means, and it is largely agreed, that Stewart's outspoken critique of Bush over the years was, in Scarborough's own words, "truth."
Is this outrage real, or is Scarborough simply showing a childlike jealousy? Just 547,000 people watch Morning Joe, compared with The Daily Show, which gets 1.45 to 1.6 million viewers, and that doesn't even count the illegal downloads so popular among his key demographic.
For comparison's sake, a quick search of the popular torrent site Mininova shows there are no illegal copies of Morning Joe.
The important point to bear in mind here is that Stewart really is speaking truth to power. Obama may not follow his fans with the same sort of contractual mandate Dick Cheney demanded, but he does keep up on the news, and this has been big news all week.
Stewart was friendly, but kept the joking to a minimum, and 2.3 million viewers watched it on TV with another 470,000+ on the web site already. That second number only counts the individual clip of the show, not those who watched the full episode. Full episodes don't have a view counter.
Surely some among the millions who have watched it are power, and he has spoken to them.
The benefit of speaking truth is evident in the high levels of knowledge that viewers get from it. Pew reported Daily Show viewers are the most informed (57% aware), while "morning news viewers" are not (only 34% aware).
The attacks didn't stop there. Scarborough said he could make fun "If Jon Stewart had transcripts of his show, but he doesn't." A visit to www.TheDailyShow.com shows that every clip and every episode ever aired is available in full-screen streaming video on the site. Is Joe Scarborough an idiot, or does he just assume his viewers are?
Scarborough went on to say that if transcripts existed, he could catch Jon mocking the surge or mocking General Petreaus. What strange choices to cite. You don't need archival footage to hear Stewart disparage the surge or Petreaus, you just need a telephone. But in case you'd like some footage, here's a clip that will make you tap your toes.
And for your ease of further viewing, here are more Petreaus videos from The Daily Show.
Scarborough further mocked, "He's got 100 people working for him... It's really easy to be a comedian and make those cheap shots when you have 100 people working for you."
As a matter of clarification, The Daily Show only has about 30 employees including interns, costumes, key grip, and the handful of irregular contributors. A more interesting question might be how many people employees Scarborough has working for him. Unlike with The Daily Show, the answer to this question proved somewhat difficult to find. Clearly he doesn't have anyone on staff familiar with the use of Google.
If Morning Joe wants to present actual, accurate facts, there's nothing holding him back. Jon Stewart has higher ratings, but runs far fewer hours in the week. The Daily Show has 1.5 million viewers per week, but with only 2-hours of total programming. Scarborough has about a half million viewers, but runs 15-hours per week. That means Stewart only commands 6-million viewer hours in a week, while Scarborough enjoys 7.5 million viewer hours. While some may view it as sad that it takes Scarborough 12-hours of live, on-air presentation to match what Stewart does in four half-hour segments, it still means that by the end of Friday, he's shown more ads to more people. It's therefore reasonable that he can afford the same caliber of research, assuming he wants his viewers to see such results, and that the whole budget hasn't been blown on his Palin-esque hair stylist.
In fairness, Joe Scarborough doesn't even know when he drops the F-Bomb during a live broadcast. Perhaps, like Rush Limbaugh, he really can't even hear himself talk.*
"Maybe Jon Stewart can tell us now what will happen in the market over the next 5 to 10 years. Maybe he can tell us what's next in Iraq." Well that's just ridiculous. Stewart has never claimed to be a prognosticator, and even the best and brightest minds in the world can't predict a decade into the future with any certainty at all. This comment may have been hyperbole, but it came across as insulting absurdity.
"I'd like to see Jon Stewart come out and tell us what he believes in." Interestingly, Stewart did exactly that in his Thursday night interview with Jim Cramer, but Scarborough didn't find time during his 3-hour broadcast the next morning to mention anything about it. Not that it was fair, unfair, or even that it happened, though it was such big news just a few days earlier.
While Scarborough had plenty to say against Stewart, he had little to say in actual defense of Cramer. Cramer, mind you, is not the villain here. Scarborough was wrong about him, but he only became the face of the showdown, and only because he made a fuss when he felt Stewart called him out. Scarborough, who has now been called out, has chosen to fall silent. With the influence and intellect at Stewart's command, this is likely the first smart move Scarborough has made in the situation so far.
* This is not meant as any offense to the hearing impaired. It's meant as a slight to Rush Limbaugh, who is obviously exaggerating his disability to get attention.
