Stewart's Hit Job Won't Keep 'Clueless Pundits' Off TV

Jon Stewart’s takedown of Jim Cramer and CNBC is indicative of a real, if fleeting, sea change in our attitudes about the economy, Thomas Frank writes in the Wall Street Journal. “The applause Mr. Stewart has received for his j’accuse is the sound of the old order cracking.” But “clueless pundits often do get on top” and “stay there,” Frank writes, “despite all manner of rebukes handed down by history itself.”

We’re quickly getting wise to the “bubble-blowers of pop culture, the army of fake populists” who paint the market “as the trustworthy friend of the little guy buffeted by a globalizing economy.” But the problem is that the truer voices are consistently marginalized, and it “won’t go away,” Frank writes. “In the marketplace to describe the marketplace itself, there is precious little competition.” (More economy stories.)