Absurdity, Allegory and China

Jon Stewart has been on the hot little partisan tongues of Team NBC over the past week, some of whom have circled like musk ox defending their young from wolves. The “young” in this case is CNBC, the Consumer News and Business Channel, owned and operated by NBC Universal. The pack of wolves is actually only a ‘lone’ one, Jon Stewart of Comedy Central who spliced, clipped, banged, and ran the NBC herd through the wringer in an Everyman style that most of us whose eyes glaze over when it comes to money matters can understand – by asking the same questions we’ve all been asking: “Where were you guys when you saw this coming, and whose side are you on?” And now the people who have been reporting on and have known over the long run that the slag heap had long since passed the angle of repose and was, at some point, going to catastrophically collapse are taking offense. “Circle the herd – rumps in, horns out – and defend our young, even if they’ve had a hand in trashing the world. They’re our young, and we’ll defend them to the end.” Right? Well, probably not. It’s television, and once the ratings start slipping they’ll eat their young just as quickly as they would their mothers if the ratings started to tank on them. And in the real world, musk oxen are much more reliable, loyal and protective than anyone who works in television.

If somehow you’ve missed the Stewart vs. CNBC brawl, go to the Daily Show and watch for several days in the lead up to the bumbling Cramer interview. Or just Google it. It’s everywhere, as well it should be, but not for how the news folks are spinning it. Joe Scarborough of “Morning Joe” was particularly lame and off the mark, and he showed just how far off when he whipped up the hapless Jim Cramer, a minor off-the-bench player, into believing that he was their Goliath. But Stewart didn’t slay him, since that wasn’t the point. He wounded him pretty badly but stopped short of cutting his throat and watching him bleed out on camera.

AIG is on deck, and I can only hope that Stewart will do to them what he has done to CNBC. Or maybe, just maybe, CNBC and most other mainstream news orgs will have the stones to side with the people instead of their corporate bosses and sponsors this time around. (I know, I’m dreaming.) The list of recipients of the AIG “rewards for colossal failure” bonus package will eventually become public, by hook or by crook, and those who are on it will be outed. Then things will get very dangerous. The AIG folks have but one realistic choice: publicly renounce the bonuses and just walk away. Will they do that? It’s money, and reason rarely prevails when one-eyed greed is running the show. This may very well lead to large-scale problems that will not be able to be adequately addressed by Comedy Central.

Today I read a suggestion for a “million taxpayer march” on Wall Street. That might be something that would finally get me to travel back to the US., though, realistically a mass rally on what has become known as the center of unimaginable corruption would probably lead to mass violence. The NYT is reporting that the Obama White House is concerned about a populist backlash:

“We’ve got enormous problems that need to be addressed,” David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, said in an interview. “And it’s hard to address because there’s a lot of anger about the irresponsibility that led us to this point.”

Perhaps that is what Washington finally needs. Now we’ll find out what Obama is really made of, if he has the qualities to become one of the elites. This is looking more and more like his metaphoric 9/11. He’s in the middle of a much larger minefield than he was at the end of last week, and where and how he treads will determine who will follow. This one is not a joke.