The Rude Pundit
What Cramer's right about is that CNBC was just giving people what they like: a loud, shiny show that massages your avarice muscle until it's good and supple. And that's exactly what Bernie Madoff was doing, too.Proudly lowering the level of political discourse
3/13/2009
Bernard Madoff Is Our Sin:
.......................
This is not an attempt to blame Bernard Madoff's victims for the vile man's crimes. Madoff deserves to be ass-raped while getting shit swirlies for the rest of his pathetic life. Madoff's shallow, shameless statement to the court was like a lesson in how to use legal obfuscation to cover up for your family. His apology was less convincing than a high school jock telling a cheerleader he fucked that he has herpes.
And he sounded like every craven petty thief that's ever been caught breaking and entering: "When I began the Ponzi scheme I believed it would end shortly and I would be able to extricate myself and my clients from the scheme." Yeah, Bernie Madoff was fuckin' Jean Valjean at the beginning there, just stealing bread to feed his family. By the end, he was essentially scrambling like a junkie who's trying to use one loan shark to pay off the others: "I wired money between the United States and the United Kingdom to make it appear as though there were actual securities transactions executed on behalf of my investment advisory clients." But, see, he wasn't a total cocksucking bag of scum: "Madoff Securities International Ltd. was principally engaged in proprietary trading and was a legitimate, honestly run and operated business."
It's not unlike Jeffrey Dahmer saying that he didn't eat the ears of his victims. When you make Elie Wiesel and his foundation lose all their money, you don't get to mitigate your evil.
The fact that the courtroom floor didn't crack open and stiletto-clawed demons didn't reach up to tear Madoff into gory bits before dragging his shrieking, awful soul to hell is pretty much proof that there is no God.
So, no, this is not to blame Madoff's victims. It's actually to blame all of us. The fascinating thing about last night's Daily Show beatdown of CNBC screamer Jim Cramer by Jon Stewart was not how Stewart knocked out Cramer. That was easy - Cramer walked into the ring and curled up on the floor, waiting for it to be over. It was that
Stewart's point wasn't merely that CNBC is often wrong. No, Stewart was asking if CNBC existed to give aid and comfort to corporations or to the individual. In fact, Stewart's point was that we are greedy shits by nature and we need people to temper it, not fan it. And isn't it the job of purported business journalists to find out who's telling the truth and not just get in bed with execs so that they can, as Cramer said of Lehman Brothers' CEO, lie to their faces and expect to be believed?
Stewart's anger at Cramer (and, indeed, at all journalism, not just business) is that we need people to do their fucking jobs. Or we get unnecessary wars and financial collapses that could have been predicted.
...............
more at:
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2009/03/bernard-madoff-is-our-sin-genius-though.html