Jon Stewart and Paul Krugman have been going at it lately over the trillion dollar coin. Here is the original segment that drew the ire of Krugman.
After this segment, Paul Krugman wrote a blog article titled “Lazy Jon Stewart”.
Krugman Wrote:
Above all, however, what went wrong here is a lack of professionalism on the part of Stewart and his staff. Yes, it’s a comedy show — but the jokes are supposed to be (and usually are) knowing jokes, which are funny and powerful precisely because the Daily Show people have done their homework and understand the real issues better than the alleged leaders spouting nonsense. In this case, however, it’s obvious that nobody at TDS spent even a few minutes researching the topic. It was just yuk-yuk-yuk they’re talking about a trillion-dollar con hahaha.
Hey, if we want this kind of intellectual laziness, we can just tune in to Fox.
He also went on Huffington Post and accused John Stewart of “ruining his brand”. Jon Stewart of course fired back with another video to defend his take on the issue in which he defended the previous segment.
Jon Stewart likes and admires Krugman which he states at the end of the snippet. Paul Krugman is actually correct in this minor skirmish. The mainstream media and news have become pawns to the Plutocracy. Jon Stewart even though he likes to deny it, has generally presented real analysis of many serious issues of our time. Inasmuch as he does it in a funny and satirical manner, he has built a more informed audience.
This informed audience sometimes would defer to some of his statements as one use to defer to mainstream news when they were credible. Dismissing the trillion dollar coin without context was not the best thing to do. While the trillion dollar coin is silly and makes the US look irresponsible, it is legal. What the Republicans are doing by holding the country hostage is not simply silly, it is unpatriotic and irresponsible. He would have served his audience better by framing the context with the intellectual “honesty” one expects of his humor.