The Blog @ TJBrown.com

A reader scolded me that “misrepresentation sucks” in response to my characterization of the Jon Stewart-Jim Cramer confrontation. Misrepresentation does suck, but we can agree to disagree on whether Stewart takes himself too seriously.

One person from whom we could never expect misrepresentation is Jon Stewart. No he’s a fair, straight-down-the-line satirist. After all, Rick Santelli canceled his appearance on The Daily Show and Stewart represented things 100 percent accurately. Right?

Stewart after all was correct in saying that Santelli was critical, not Howard Beale-like when criticizing the other bailouts, like TARP. Pay no attention to this:

(And, yes, it’s completely fair to characterize CNBC as a box of parrots after that segment, eh?)

And yes, Stewart really got CNBC. Sure Cramer made his bad stock picks, but that was awesome painting CNBC having the audacity to have a guy from the Financial Times newsroom explain the “Lehman is no Bear Stearns” last summer. Stewart of course made sure it was obvious that that reporter was from the FT.

And then, what a zinger he threw at David Faber when he says that Merrill Lynch’s John Thain insists they do not need more capital. Yes, Faber explaining what Merrill Lynch officially said was journalistic malpractice! That three second clip really gave me the who essence of what Faber was saying about Merrill anyway.

And when Faber asked Thain if there would be more write downs (and Thain said no), Faber should have maybe waterboarded Thain (or at least brought in Jack Bauer) until he got the correct answer out of him.

But even better is Stewart’s comment on Carl Quintanilla, who was shown interviewing Allen Stanford, who at the time was not accused of any wrongdoing (and had plenty of clients who did their due diligence). Quintanilla asked Stanford at the very end if it was “fun being a billionaire.” Stanford said it was.

It wasn’t Quintanilla’s greatest moment. But to then suggest that “Between the two of them (Stanford and Stanford), I can’t decide who I’d rather see in jail,” is a gross misrepresentation of Quintanilla’s (at worst) slight negligence.

Our reader is a journalist, and I’m not sure what there is to admit about being a regional journalist, other than a regional journalist works harder. (As hard as it might be for her to believe this, I respect local and regional journalists a heck of a lot more than national scribes.) But as a journalist, I’m sure she’s had to do multiple interviews with the same subject. Some are very comfortable, because the subject matter is a little more breezy. Some can be very uncomfortable, because the subject matter is tough. Some yet can be quite brief. “You’re asking what? I have nothing to say.” Some still never occur. (”So-and-so from CNBC called? Screw them, I’m not talking to them!”)

Maybe that’s where I have my biggest problem with Stewart. He completely misrepresented CNBC as a bunch of bumbling idiots who know nothing (at best) or were accessories to crime (at worst). Why did he do this? So he could show Rick Santelli, who is against the “dumbasses whose optimism and judgment blinded them into accepting money offered by banks.”

Santelli used the term “losers,” which is a pejorative term sometimes. However, I’m not so sure Santelli was using that term to mean how Stewart defined it. Xavier and Purdue were losers tonight. They’re hardly the bottom of the barrel in college basketball.

The world (in general) is rife with risk. Every deal you enter has several kinds of risk — for both sides entering the deal. I’m selling a home and buying a home Tuesday. There are no guarantees the value of the home I’m supposed to buy will increase. There are no guarantees a once-in-a-million flood or a tornado won’t destroy the house. Now, I can mitigate the risk, but that’s costly. Does it make sense to insure a home with a homeowner’s policy? To me, yes. Our business ships out hundreds of packages on UPS per day. We normally do not insure packages beyond the $50 limit UPS grants shippers. Almost all of our packages contain more than $50 in product. This is a risk. We’re sort of self-insuring by determining that damaged packages will only be a small percentage of our actual sales, and we’ve deemed this to be less expensive than UPS’ insurance. However, as statistically unlikely as it might be, what if 10% of all our UPS shipments were damaged? We’d have gambled and lost.

Santelli’s point (which has been an overriding theme of his through the bailouts) is that accepting risk and responsibility is part of the game. It’s unfortunate that people have lost money. It’s very sad they have. However, to undermine contract law doesn’t mitigate anything. It just makes it work.

But sure, Santelli is probably at home rooting for people to be thrown out onto the streets.

Misrepresentation does suck, even for satirists.

Today, we learned that the South Side Irish Parade is no more.  For the last 30 years or so, the parade that ran through Beverley from 103rd to 115th or so on Western Ave., has marked the Sunday before St. Patrick’s Day (or St. Patrick’s Day, if on a Sunday).  It was a great event. I’ve been a few times, each time as a guest of one of my best friends’ family, who has relatives a block away from the route.

It was a family event. Sure drinking was involved, but people seemed to know just how far to push the envelope, and no one would think twice about bringing a little kid.

It was a great event, but as it became more and more popular, it attracted something in the neighborhood of 300,000 people. Most, as you might calculate, did not come from Beverly-Morgan Park-Mt. Greenwood-Oak Lawn. It was obviously just another chance for people to get wasted. St. Patrick’s Day has become a five-day event around here, and to me it gets a little tiresome. Saturday the 14th, my wife and I were out celebrating a friend’s birthday, and the ride home was littered with drunks.

The parade committee even pleaded with bar owners and “bus trip” organizers (you know, the types that charter a school bus, take a ton of people from points north and get them liquored up) to tone things down.  Would the Western Ave. and 103rd St. bar owners oblige? Not in any way that hurt business. This economy is slow, you know.

At any rate, this non-Irish North Sider wishes the organizers luck reconstituting some type of sensible event to mark St. Patrick’s Day.  The neighborhood didn’t ruin their event; the outsiders did.

I never cared much for “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” the irrational, over-the-top hatred many in the Left reserved for President Bush, Vice President Cheney. It wasn’t particularly becoming of those who exhibited it. Therefore, it pains me to see what’s happening at Notre Dame, where conservative groups and Catholic groups are up in arms over the university’s decision to invite Barack Obama to speak at graduation.

The Bishop of the South Bend-Fort Wayne Diocese has decided to skip the commencement for the first time in 25 years because of Obama’s president.  Other groups are planning protests to greet the President on graduation day.

Really?

What’s worse is that I know a number of people that support all of this. Now, I disagree with enough of Obama’s policies, especially dealing with abortion.  I can rail against Obama’s economic policies, his less than stellar choices of people to run his White House, his approval of various ethically-challenged Illinois politicans, and more.  However, he is also the President, and he is responding to an invitation from the school.

More than that, you have a few thousand new graduates who want to celebrate their special day. It’s not Barack Obama’s day. It’s their day.

Just 11 years ago, I remember another graduation speaker sparked anger among some students. Then-Lt. Gov. Joe Kernan, a Notre Dame graduate a former POW and the former mayor of South Bend, was invited to speak at that graduation. The student body president remarked that Kernan would have been an excellent choice to speak at Indiana or Purdue or Ball State, but not Notre Dame because “we’re a national university.”

Living near Notre Dame at the time, I was a little offended that this woman first swiped at my alma mater (and the other state schools). I was also puzzled why a graduation speaker was so important. It turns out they wanted Madeline Albright or Nelson Mandela that year. Instead, they wound up with Kernan, who later would be Governor of Indiana.

(A friend of mine, a Notre Dame guy, remarked via his Facebook status that he was going to renounce Notre Dame until they stop embarassing themselves. I’d say the 1998 Joe Kernan controversy was the bigger black eye for the Irish. This Obama affair is more a black eye for the South Bend-Fort Wayne Diocese.)

At any rate, I made a few phone calls and put together a little column. In turns out that Ball State’s recent list of commencement speakers rivaled that of Notre Dame’s. So did Indiana’s. Sen. Dan Coats spoke at my IU graduation, and I could not tell you one word he said.  So, I noticed that hated Purdue had no commencement speakers beyond the university president. Why was that? It was, a school spokesman explained, because the commencement should be about the graduates. A big-name speaker could cast a shadow over the day. I don’t necessarily agree with the logic, but the sentiment is right on. It’s not an appropriate venue to denounce Obama’s policies.

Which brings us back to Obama. If you want to protest him, choose another venue in which to do so.  Respect the presidency. Respect the achievements of the students.

Show some class.

Tomorrow morning, Rod Blagojevich gets a chance to audition for maybe his next career.  WLS will have Rod Blagojevich on for two hours in place of the normal morning noise. The Big 89 even obliged by lining up some guests for Rod to entertain:

Among the guests, reports Chris Jones in Theater Loop on chicagotribune.com, are members of the cast of Second City’s “Rod Blagojevich Superstar,” a production that spoofs the former governor.

Until the ex-Gov. is indicted (should happen in a couple weeks) and then convicted (never a sure bet), he and wife Patti will need to find some way to feed their family. Talk radio might be the perfect option.  The medium is populated by as many hacks as television is.

I know yesterday’s reader will disagree, but comparing Jon Stewart to Rush Limbaugh was more of a backhanded compliment to Stewart than an insult.  Limbaugh’s radio show has been national for about 20 years now. When his popularity crested the first time, it was 1992, and he was something different. He made AM radio relevant again. Here in Chicago, AM radio meant either all news or folksy, non-opinionated sacchrine talk. Since it was before all the cable news channels provided a large range of opinion shows, there was a hungry market.

Today, Rush Limbaugh has a devoted group of followers, and he remains relevant.  But his “hateful” humor only appeals to the right because he intends to provoke, and he doesn’t put up any illusions that he is some impartial observer. Why would the left care to listen?  To the right, he’s not particularly funny anymore. In 1992 and 1993, he was funny, and I had several friends on the left who would find his satire and humor worth listening to. And that was a criterion for Monday’s reader.

Limbaugh’s style’s been copied by both left and right (and even sports talk) and so many imitators are unlistenable.  Limbaugh himself is too predictable. I suppose this makes Blago a perfect candidate for talk radio. He can bluster and he can entrance with opinions. Most of all, he can charm.

I’m a little curious how tomorrow morning goes for Blagojevich. I don’t think I should listen, even if I’m fighting the temptation to.

Tucker Carlson has an ax to grind with Jon Stewart, but ax or no ax, he’s right. Stewart is not funny. Maybe he’ll elicit a couple of chuckles during a show, but as Carlson points out, he gets more cheers than laughs. He fashions himself as a court jester, but in fact, he has his agenda. His much-praised takedown of Jim Cramer was nothing more than a political hit.

My friends on the left might find him a barrel of laughs, and good for them. They have their Rush Limbaugh. Just like Stewart, Limbaugh will (sometimes quite viciously) eviscerate those whose political philosophies differ from his. Limbaugh’s politics are far right, but he’d be the first to tell you it’s entertainment.

Stewart takes on the politicians, unless, of course, it’s the politicians he likes. Then he’ll ask inane questions like “How are you holding up?” or “Is it hard not to take this personally?” as he asked John Kerry in 2004. Carlson asked Stewart on Crossfire in 2004 why Stewart couldn’t ask tougher questions of Kerry, and got Stewart to respond that his show’s only a comedy show.

What follows is Stewart ripping both Carlson and his liberal counterpart Paul Begala for “helping the politicians and corporations.”

The Daily Show is a comedy show that lectures. And it’s preaching more and more.

Jim Cramer is reckless, and he’s a fool. But he’s not responsible for the financial crisis. Even Richard Cohen could sympathize with Cramer.

Reason’s Michael Moynihan also takes exception to Stewart’s self-importance.

He is the left’s Rush Limbaugh, only thinner.