Irony is served with Jon Stewart’s interview of Jim Cramer
After a week-long television feud, yesterday Jim Cramer appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart to explain why CNBC had failed in their mission to intelligently report financial news as the financial crisis was beginning to unravel. I admire Jim Cramer for going on the Daily Show (and several times on the Colbert Report) and his willingness to have an honest debate with commentators that challenge him.
Nevertheless, there was a tinge of irony in Cramer’s response to Stewart as the comedy show host was probing his guest to try to understand why Jim Cramer was so buffoonish and irrational about serious financial matters on his show. Jim Cramer responded by saying, “I’m a guy trying to do an entertainment show about business for people to watch, but it’s difficult to have a reporter say, ‘I just came back from an interview with Hank Paulson and he lied his darn full head off.’ It’s difficult; I think it challenges the boundaries.” Ironically, though, this is what Jon Stewart does every day on his show. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is primarily an entertainment show, but it also interweaves smart social criticism into its comedy. And Jon Stewart is famous for giving colleagues and guests (many of them powerful and high-profile) tough cross-examinations. He does this so well that his parody news show often delivers better journalism than the established media. Stewart said to Cramer in reply, “Yeah, I mean, I’m under the assumption – and maybe this is purely ridiculous – but I’m under the assumption that you don’t just take their word at face value. That you actually then go around and try to figure it out.” I commend (for what it’s worth) Jim Cramer for having the guts to confront Jon Stewart on his home turf, but perhaps the financial news commentator has a thing or two to learn from Jon Stewart about successfully marrying smarts and entertainment on television.
Jimmy Fallon rebounds with hardcore history humor
Jimmy Fallon recently replaced Conan O’Brien as host of Late Night and, in my opinion, he has been off to a sluggish start. In the first episodes of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, he swayed on stage in a distracting way during the stand up routine, he was aloof with guests, and he seemed all-around awkward hosting a television program. Nonetheless, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon made a major comeback yesterday when it exhibited a four-minute comedy sketch about the Gadsden Purchase (1853). Nothing says, “I’m striking out on my own and creating a unique television comedy presence” like obscure history humor. High risk, high reward – well done, Jimmy Fallon!
Storytelling tricks: connotation
How does a good storyteller narrate a tale? One of a storyteller’s rhetorical tricks, I have noticed, is keeping in mind the connotation of what he is saying or writing. That is, he adds to his narrative phrases that stimulate the imagination and suggest another way of seeing things, though such phrases may not add any new information to the story. A good example I found in Stephen O’Shea’s Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World:
“The freed warrior was past thirty, already a ripening age for an ax-man with countries to cleave. Henceforth Karl Martiaux – Charles Martel – would forge a kingdom that covered much of present-day France, western Germany, and the Low Countries. Martel – the name comes from Martin, not marteau (hammer) – embarked on an unrelenting itinerary of violence, forcibly bringing the eastern and western Franks to heel” (62; emphasis added).
The artful passage speaks for itself, but I’ll dissect it anyway. O’Shea adds the parenthetical phrase about Martel’s name to slily suggest that Martel was indeed very hammer-like, even though the literal meaning of the excerpt looks as if O’Shea is trying to dispel this etymology. The reader gains nothing from the author’s tricky penmanship other than a more vivid and enticing portrait of Martel, his character.
Storytelling
I have been thinking a lot lately about stories and storytelling. Stories, loosely defined, are the way we understand everything about ourselves and the world, form morals to how an engine works, from theoretical physics to the origin of life. From this perspective, every act of communication is an instance of storytelling. Scientists are storytellers; historians are storytellers; marketers are storytellers; professors lecturing are storytellers; movie directors are storytellers.
But not all stories are equal in our eyes. We are choosy with what stories we take seriously and which ones we dismiss. A Christian fundamentalist may disregard the story of evolution, while the secular scientist will find little use in his life for reading the stories of the Bible. Why is that? How do we decide which stories we are going to hear and believe?
HistoryJournal.org 
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