THE WAY IT USED TO SHOULD BE

Time it was that the swindlers, snake oil salesmen and the fraudsters feared the cleansing light of publicity, and waited for the comfort of darkness and obscurity to hide their greedy, wicked ways. If you're no younger than LOST you remember watching snippets of 60 Minutes when people ran away from Mike Wallace and Morley Safer, desperate to get a door or a large security guard between them and the probing Teevee muckraker. Sometime around the time that Al Cowlings leisurely drove his White Ford Bronco down I-405 South in SoCal 15 years ago, that kind of journalistic digging went on life support, and in the circus that followed it flat-lined, someone having anonymously signed its DNR paperwork. Since then, we get Matt Lauer badgering people about pot photos, or the latest titillating story of the camera-hungry creeper cop whose first 3 wives all disappeared, and now number 4 is gone and he's crying croc(k) tears again, but no one, and LOST means nobody on network TV asks tough probing questions while demanding real, responsive answers. Sheeyit, even The Governor in Waiting - Moonbeam 2.0 is now into the act, going live talking about Anna Nicole's enablers. Yo, Jerry, LOST thought about voting for ya in 2010, but not anymore! Even you got into this inane act?

Which brings up Jon Stewart's beatdown of Jim Cramer - the latter's servile, groveling and slouched persona whimpering "please don't hurt me, I'm hurting too" - earlier this week. Jon Stewart is a comedian. He's supposed to make people laugh, but he's always done it by poking fun at the real world and the supposedly serious things in the world. His interview with Cramer wasn't funny. He asked the huckster, whose network had touted as the one we could "Trust" on investments, the kinds of questions that the DOJ, members of Congress, the President, and Treasury Department should be asking all of the so-called captains of industry, and Cramer caved, and twisted and dissembled and fell on himself in televised contrition. These people destroyed the notion of retirement for the multitudes, and damaged the ability of countless others to contribute to their children's college educations. However, all of the networks give 'em a pass, all but Stewart. Sure, and the humor works - it is strategically disarming ("what a strange world, here we're watching Jim Cramer on Martha Stewart's show. Martha Stewart is the one who did time for securities fraud).

Stewart's interview, available here in full (flash player required) usage of scathingly incriminating videotape of a very non-contrite, cockure Cramer was of a type that another, now deceased scion of the NBC family was lauded for - yet Saint Timmeh Russert never did it anywhere proximate to the sharpness and brilliance of Stewart's use in skewering this frontman for a snakeoil teevee channel. In a more perfect world, in a more honest world, in a world where keeping regular people informed of the important things that are really going on around us, Jon Stewart would be doing someone's anchorjob at a major news desk. All of us need to question why he isn't and how we get the networks to stop feeding us digital pablum and fluff, and go back to handing over the real, unvarnished fact.