LameList!

Hurray for  Jon Stewart, comedian who has emarged as the best journalist around after taking on CNBC business cable channel. 

Traditionally trained journalists have been throwing “fat pitches” — easy to hit baseballs served up to a batter to blast out of the park for a home run.  Stewart, thank goodness, asked tough questions.

I like the U.K. Guardian’s take on it:

His assault on Wall Street began in earnest with a classic Daily Show technique: a series of juxtaposed clips revealing incompetence and hypocrisy

He accused CNBC hosts and pundits of abandoning their journalistic duties and acting like cheerleaders for the market.

The interview was one of those classic television moments that crystallised the public mood in the credit crisis. Stewart articulated the anger and bewilderment of millions of Americans who now feel ripped off and afraid. He framed the question everyone wanted asked: how were the financial masters of the universe allowed to pursue their ruinous behaviour unchallenged for so long?

It caught the attention of the White House, prompted a frenzy among bloggers and soul-searching in the media, which failed to spot the biggest story of a lifetime or warn the public until it was too late. Indeed, CNBC and other supposedly objective journalists stood accused of complicity with big business, belonging to a cosy coterie that egged on company chief executives and fanned the flames of excess.

CNBC is a parade CEOs as talking press releases (in other words, our future is so bright, buy my stock and pump up the share price) as well as an “Entertainment Tonight” style of egocentric commentators whose motivation is to get their faces on TV and enable CNBC to sell ads.