Santelli's tantrum: the super-wealthy elite strike back!

Santelli is a twat and never made any real money trading in his life. Believe me I know.

Wow.

yt really does read Playboy for the articles.

This kind of game's been going on since the days of the Greeks (and probably beyond). The only difference is the level of sophistication.

In 2002, Adam Curtis (the filmmaker behind "The Power of Nightmares" and "The Trap") put together an excellent four-part documentary for the BBC titled "The Century of Self", which explored the relationship between Sigmund Freud's theories on human motivation at the subconscious level and the first practical applications of such in America during the 20s by his nephew and proto-PR consultant, Edward Bernays.

At first Bernays concentrated solely on commercial projects and was so successful that he acquired the wealth of Croesus almost overnight. His most notable "achievement" was breaking the then social taboo of women smoking in public. He did this by eschewing traditional advertisement techniques (which at the time concentrated purely on the utility of the product) in favour of linking the nebulous concept of “female empowerment” with smoking cigarettes. In the run-up to a major rally in New York Bernays recruited a group of female actors and instructed them to light -up in unison at a pre-determined signal. He then approached all the major newspapers and radio networks and told them a group of Suffragettes were planning to protest the rally in a spectacular way. When he gave his signal the reporters caught everything – including several huge banners he'd had made with the words “Women light torches of Freedom” emblazoned across them. The trap had been sprung: society might frown on women smoking, but who could be against “Freedom?” Within three years the tobacco companies' profits had doubled as women across the United States became “socially empowered” without ever thinking clearly about what the strange term meant. He was the first person to conduct product-placement in movies. He was also the first person to link celebrity to both consumption and politics (Bernays boosted Hoover's flagging popularity overnight by having him photographed with Al Jolson, Babe Ruth etc.)

Bernays was also one of the main PR puppeteers behind the American obsession with buying stocks and shares (again the link was drawn to the notion of 'empowerment') but this time it backfired as the very forces of subconscious irrationality that his uncle had warned of cannibalized Wall Street and almost ruined him. For some time Bernays fell from favour, but when the giants of American business started to get fed up with FDR's “New Deal” (which they felt to be Communist in all but name) he was recalled to launch the kind of “PR Warfare” that has been refined and perfected about us in the last fifteen years.

FDR had no time for Bernays's theories. He felt that the masses need not be (indeed – are not) driven by subconscious irrationality – it was simply an issue of information: give the public enough of it and they could be relied upon to make informed decisions. The Democrats set about this task by employing the services of pollsters – lots of them (Gallup initially). Every newspaper carried poll after poll after poll. Is the government right to lower taxes by half a percent (yes/no)? Should the US stay out of war in Europe (yes/no)? And endless stream of public opinion flowing into the White House for FDR to make sense of. But Bernays had them scared – so much so that millions of dollars were spent on newspaper and radio ads imploring Americans to treat all “PR consultants” with extreme skepticism.

The echoes of Bernays's battles with the Democrats are as loud today as they ever were. The same seductive appeals to irrationality but with increasing sophistication. If Obama is to make it he – like Roosevelt – is going to have to find some way to outwit an opponent whose collective resources outnumber his own.

For anyone interested in the documentary (it might well be Curtis's best), you can find it very easily through Google. As far as I am aware there is no DVD release.

Fascinating stuff, cheers Geoff.

It's a great piece of work. Curtis is one of the most gifted documentary-makers I've seen in a while with a remarkable ability to wrap montage (often using mundane news footage that has been rejected by everyone else) and music around complex but coherent arguments. Occasionally he's prone to making the odd tenuous link but his films are worth watching for their fascinating historical content alone.

The Observer quote on the Wikipedia site sums him up:

"...if there has been a theme in Curtis's work since, it has been to look at how different elites have tried to impose an ideology on their times, and the tragi-comic consequences of those attempts.".

Hey lady, over here!

I HATE that I can't watch this right now. So many people talking about it.

I wish Stewart had gone after this douche rather than the easy target of a clown that Cramer is.

Didn't like this hit job at all. Cramer is nothing compared to the dolts on CNBC.

He even said he regretted that Cramer was the face of it all. He shouldn't be either. I've watched Mad Money consistently for a long time and Cramer doesn't deserve the crap that was piled on him. I would have rather seen Stewart go after people like Larry Kudlow or Santelli himself.

I am agreement with Muharulz. Cramer is a symptom, the problem is with people who watched his show and took it as sound financial advice. There is a rough parallel here, in that Cramer and Stewart both provide entertainment.

"This isn't a fucking game!" I find this a tad hypocritical (and I love Stewart). Anytime someone tries to take the Daily Show to task for journalistic lapses, the first response is "we're followed by South Park and muppets fucking!" or something. At the end of the Cramer interview Stewart says "it's not our job!." If anyone bought into Cramer's shtick thinking he was a professional and it was his job to make you fast money, then you deserved to lose that money.

I read Playboy for the articles as well.

I don't blame Cramer at all for going out there and bitching about what videos Stewart cherrypicked to put on his show. The idea that stockpicking is an exact science is so laughable. The vast majority of stock choices go up in flames. Cramer's show makes a lot of warnings about picking stocks on his show, which include not directly following his every choice. He has stated many of times that viewers should do their own research and make their own decisions with their own money.

If Stewart wants to go after CNBC, it's fine by me. But going after Jim Cramer? He's got a great show, makes a lot of great points about stocks (read up on his opinions on mark to market and the uptick rule), and he has his own charitable trust. I would have rather seen him go after Kudlow because he's a CNBC reporter, he's thinking about running against Chris Dodd, and he seems a lot more tied to the CEO love than Cramer.

But Muharulz, as yt already pointed out, Stewart did start off going broadly after CNBC and Cramer was simply one of their many targets. If you watch the first reaming it really was a broadside against the whole network. It was only when Cramer got his panties in a bunch and played the misrepresented victim, going on his little 'poor me' interview tour that Stewart turned his full attention on the guy.

If Cramer had washed the sand out of his vagina and not made himself out to be such a fucking martyr it simply would never have gone in this direction.

He's 100% right though. If a journalist has enough time to dig up a comedian's contradictions, why didn't they devote that time to going after the real big fish? That's what makes Stewart so bulletproof in his criticisms of the corporate media.

As Stewart pointed out, the network advertises Cramer as a reliable source of info. Stewart is not promoted as "THE MOST TRUSTED NAME IN NEWS" by Comedy Central. At least, not seriously.

...Even though he probably could be.

Precisely. Stewart went after all the CNBC guys. Cramer was the only one who went on other NBC shows on the defensive. Don't blame Jon for not skewering guys who didn't respond to his initial attack.

Republicans keep pushing the line that Stewart went after Cramer for a comment he made about Obama. This is pissing me off.

Republicans using diversionary tactics in the hope that deeper questions won't be asked that may undermine a cornerstone of their modern ideological thinking and put paid to the lies they live by showing how incredbily damaging they can be for ordinary people?

Say it aint so!

You take your reasoned analysis and you get the fuck out.