Jon Stewart just kicked the living crap out of Cramer on “The Daily Show,” proving once and for all that when you make foolish comments such as that investors should dump all their shares of Stark Industries, you get what’s coming to you. Somewhere Tony Stark was watching and saying, “Good.”
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Maybe you should write an issue of X-Factor where Jon Stewart goes to a book signing of Cramer’s new book and rips him a new one.
Simply put a gentle throttling.
You have to wonder if Cramer came in thinking this would be 3 minutes of funny banter like his appearance on Colbert a few days prior, only to find himself getting completely reamed for half an hour. Way to go John. Their “feud” has been getting some interesting coverage in the media, so I can’t wait to see what’s said about this as the new day kicks in. It was brutal. Gloriously brutal.
Cramer kept dismissing Stewart as “a comedian” prior to the show. I always thought that Stewart as a stand-up was only kinda so-so. It’s only in the journalistic setting that Stewart has thrived.
Part of me almost feels sorry for Cramer going in to work today. There’s going to be a lot of averted glances or soft murmurings of, “Sorry, man. You okay?”
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oh my god that was uncomfortable to watch, but it reminds me of the time when Stewart went on Crossfire and criticized the show to the point that the network cancelled it in a week (maybe 2).
It just goes to show that the court jester has more power than the king and that humor has a way of exposing a lot of evil in the world!
Oh my god that episode deserves every journalistic award it can get! Stewart not only owned Crammer, he handed the Feds the outline of the case to throw the crook in jail. I really have to wonder if the president of cnbc isn’ ordering hard drives crashed, tapes erased and all documents shredded right now. CNBC has not only failed in it’s ‘supposed’ mission they have at best been a cheerleading squad for the crooks and at worst, partners in crime.
Crammer obviously showed up with hat in hand. He walked onto stage looking like a kicked puppy. Quite different from his disposition on the shows who were cheerleading him, like Morning Joe. I don’t think he realized how bad it really was going to be for him.
It will be really interesting to see when CNBC’s ratings go from here.
New tagline for TDS: “At least we admit we’re bull****ing you”.
The most interesting part is that Stewart can, when he wants to do so, rip someone apart without screaming at them, berating them or cutting off the other person’s microphone.
Peter. Can you get Spike to stop starring at me over there on the right.
It’s creepy.
The strength of the interview — and of mainy DAILY SHOW clips — is that they provided clips proving their point. So many public figures, be they politicians, financial advisors, or especially Limbaugh and Coulter, just rewrite history at whim and assume no one will correct them or remember the truth. Unlike most serious television news shows, THE DAILY SHOW often digs up recordings of what people actually said or did. On his show, Cramer said that his quites were taken out of context. But when the interview showed those words, very much in context, all Cramer could do was make some weak apologies. Now we just have to see if Cramer’s show pretends the interview never happened (and keeps the slogan “In Cramer We Trust”) or say that he’s still being quotes out of context (without showing him urging people to buy Bear Sterns).
Kudos to Jon Stewart on this one.
Peter David: I always thought that Stewart as a stand-up was only kinda so-so.
Luigi Novi: Really? Wow, I always liked his standup. I still have his HBO special (Unleavened, I think it’s called) on VHS.
Jason: it reminds me of the time when Stewart went on Crossfire and criticized the show to the point that the network cancelled it in a week (maybe 2).
Luigi Novi: C’mon, Jason, you really think they cancelled because Stewart criticized it? If it got ratings, it wouldn’t have been cancelled.
Luigi, one of the bigwigs at CNN (sorry I can’t be more specific, it’s been awhile since I read about this) said that the Jon Stewart interview was a factor in Crossfire’s cancellation. Ratings and other thing were part of it too, but Stewart’s comments and the public’s response to them was a big part of what made them decide to reevaluate the show.
Cramer reminded me of Paul Reiser as Burke in “Aliens”:
“It was a bad call, Ripley. It was a baaad call.”
Wow. Just wow. I haven’t seen John this angry at a guest in a long time. At a few points, I felt pretty bad for Cramer, who seemed extremely unnerved by the whole affair. His voice even sounded a little shaky, and I wondered if he might cry.
The source of John’s anger became clear at the end, however, and I don’t think he was any worse to Cramer than he should have been. Now if only Rick Santelli would go on the show to defend his rants against the poor for trying to own property, something which is clearly above them.
The last one I can really remember was Lynn Cheney… and then he was mad by proxy.
It’s not like Stewart hasn’t done plenty of softball interviews, so I could almost understand Cramer walking in there and thinking that Stewart might give him some šhìŧ, but joke around for most of the interview.
But man, people are looking for someone or something to blame and Stewart’s managed to serve up CNBC and Cramer. He’d have to be a touch delusional to think that you were getting soft and fuzzy Stewart as opposed to ball busting Stewart last night. You could see that one coming all week. People wanted Stewart to punish him.
Will Cramer’s show survive? Maybe. But boy, he’s going to have to change the format. He just became the face of crappy business journalism.
I was surprised by the intensity of the interview. I was expecting it to be the normal routine, where the media makes a big deal out of something, but in the end they get along fine. Now I think the media pretty much had it right, Stewart really did have stronger feelings than he usually does.
I do have to give some credit to Cramer, though. He gave Stewart all that rope willingly. It’s not just that he could have refused to do the interview. He could also have stipulated that the interview would only be as long as a normal interview, drastically cutting Jon Stewart’s chance to go into the details that made this interview good. Cramer could have been more combative, which definitely would have changed Stewart’s tactics because Jon almost always tries to keep things civil. Just look at the interviews that Jon has done with guys like Rick Santorum, if the guest doesn’t want to get into a real discussion, they can pretty much always keep Jon from it one way or another.
So I have to give Cramer credit for not just showing up, but for keeping his cool and having a real conversation. I don’t entirely agree with him and I don’t think he accepted everything that Jon said, but I think he was pretty reasonable and classy.
You give Cramer props . . . for letting Jon walk all over him? You think the guy had a soapbox to stand on?
The headline on MSNBC says it all.
“Stewart hammers Cramer on ‘The Daily Show’.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29666141/
I guess there really is no such thing as bad publicity.
Justin: The source of John’s anger became clear at the end, however,
I assume you’re referring to Stewart’s mention of his mother and her savings. And while I do have great sympathy for those who have lost a lot in this downturn, particularly the elderly who don’t have time to wait for a turnaround, I’m also aware that Stewart makes several million a year. So I don’t imagine his mother in particular is likely to want for much.
The point, however, is that there are millions out there who don’t have a rich son to keep them going now that their savings are gone.
I’ve been told all my adult life to put money away, save money, get into the 401ks, etc. And now that money, for many, is gone because the greed of a few brought everything tumbling down.
Thank god I’m only 28 and not 58. Or 68 and already retired.
See, I think characterizing it as an ášš-kicking and such is really right.
It was hard hitting and devastating, but it was also somewhat kind. It wasn’t Jon shouting..it was him pleading for them to do the job they claim to do. He excels at that.
Cramer likely knew what he was going into. He shows up on Colbert often enough to know that the TDS/CR group does their research. He also likely knows well that what happened to Tucker Carlson for dismissing Jon Stewart (and that was years ago…Stewart’s influence as a news maker has increased a 100 fold since then).
Lugi: the main thing in the Stewart/Crossfire thing was that he really made Tucker Carlson look like a buffoon (not that that is hard…but he actually did) and once his bubble of pomposity was popped, he..and by extension, Crossfire, lost any credibility and was soon gone.
For the most part I agreed with John, but there was one very valid point Cramer made that got glossed over. The markets did keep on growing for years with out a major fall. Every time some like Greenspan pointed out that the growth rate was unsustainable, the market kept going up. After around 2006 any one that said the sky is falling was laughed off tv. It created the mind set that things would never get as bad as they were when the market started to crash banks began failing six months ago. What we have now was completely inconceivable to most American’s let alone the people in the finance industry. That is the one area were I would cut Cramer Some slack.
The housing crash we could see coming, but the fact that it would take the entire stock market with it blind sided every one.
Then I guess it’s possible to bury your head in the clouds as well as the sand. The lesson here is: Greenspan is usually right, and a house of cards is only as stable as the builder’s hand.
But a point I believe Stewart tried to make several times: Intelligent, knowledgeable people famliar with the markets, which is what CNBC has promoted themselves as being, should not be shrugging and saying “Well, it’s been up for 6 years now, so clearly that will continue.”
They should know, know that it’s going to go down at some point and should have been putting their supposed expertise to use to determine just what was the growing market based on, and how much might an inevitable correction be.
Here is the real joke. Ever since we dropped the gold standard, the US economy is not much different than the comic book secondary market. At it’s core we have a faith based financial system and housing market. Stocks and commodities are priced based on their perceived future potential, not the actual profit they are making at the moment. A house is sold for what ever price you can convince a buyer to pay, not the materials and labor it took to build it. CNBC being the cheer leader channel actually effected the price of financial products. Self fulfilling prophecy. The problem is that you hit a point where you lose suspension of disbelief. “People have to use oil, but should I really buy it at $120 a barrel?” or “Cable’s a cool character, but should I really be paying $75 for New Mutants 87?”.
I would make a sports analogy but CNBC is a cheer leader for a game that does not end. We just get penalties when people wake up to the true value of what things are worth. Unfortunately retirees end up loosing their life savings when this happens. The young people will live to get out of the penalty box. A lot will probably make a lot of money on the next faith based boom.
Watching the unedited interview, I really like Stewart’s “Sherman’s March” analogy.
For those not keeping score at home, a nice summation of what led to the whole showdown can be found here http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2009/03/11/mad-money-vs-mad-funny/
And the interview with Cramer himself can be found here http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=220536&title=Jim-Cramer-Pt.-1
Just caught the show over here in the UK, and have to echo so many of the comments above. This was the most gripping bit of TV I’ve seen in ages, and I for one was glad Jon wasn’t in joking mood. With the opening I thought “Ah well, after all that build up and Jon looked P.O.ed it’s going to be some joshing around”.
That’d been good tv, but as he slowly lulled Cramer into a false sense of safety I realised we were in for a classic. Both the wife and I came away just going “wow”. Give that man an award now!
Jason, thanks for the info. I stand corrected. I’m surprised that Stewart could have that much of an effect.
The real sad part is that Jon Stewart has become one of the most hard-hitting ‘journalists’ on TV.
He asks real questions and won’t let people off the hook for non-answers. He makes the MSM look pretty bad sometimes. If they would stop with the softball questions and stop trying to be nice so they keep “access” to the people they should be getting hard info from, then maybe most news would become relevant and truly investigative again.
Jason,
I really think you are making a bigger deal about Stewart being one of the causes for the end of “Crossfire”. However, even if you are right, it’s hard to get worked up about it. Because, for the most part, Stewart was right. “Crossfire” was unique when it first hit the airwaves. With all the cable news shows now, it was no longer unique and the move to a studio audience seemed to suck any intelligence that was left right out of it. Instead, it turned into a spectacle where Carville, Begala and others could spew nonsense, misinformation, talking points and outright hate – and sometimes all four at the same time. No truly intelligent debate was occurring for a while before they killed it.
Justin,
“Now if only Rick Santelli would go on the show to defend his rants against the poor for trying to own property, something which is clearly above them.”
I would like to see that as well. Since, what Santelli did wasn’t ranting “against the poor”, he was ranting against this mentality – which got us into this mess in the first place – that somehow none of this is the Average American’s fault. That people have had a gun to their head and – whether they make $20,000 or $200,000 a year or more – live beyond their means.
It is a mentality that if you simply want to enforce sensible lending practices you will be accused of “redlining”, accused of “racism”, “sexism” or “hating the poor”, threatened with not only boycotts but pressured by the Justice Department to lend or else be sued for violating the poor’s “civil right” to own a home – particularly poor people who belong to a “protected class”.
So this happens, and those who follow the rules, bust their ášš and work overtime for extras are then hit with a double whammy – not only will their neighbors get assistance and federally mandated adjustments on their mortgage for falling behind, but their tax dollars will help them do it! What a deal!
Seriously, the frightening thing is the people who espouse this philosophy are now in charge. So rational decisions like lending to people who can afford to pay back will be ignored in the name of “fairness”. Obama and Pelosi will make sure to soak the rich, take more of their hard-earned money. This will prolong and deepen the recession, but at least they can score political points by bashing the rich and talking to the rest of us like children who should be happy we get to keep any of our money.
And those who don’t want to make tough decisions will continue to get rewarded. Whether it’s fat, lazy CEOs who refused to make better cars or didn’t know how or a union that refuses to give an inch despite averaging $73/hour for a worker on the line, the government seems determined to continue to prop up companies that have become unsustainable. So someone making minimum wage is helping someone keep a $73/hour job, whether they want to buy their cars or not.
Again, most of our politicians and leaders are failing us. Even McCain would rather blame “greed” for the economy’s troubles than speak truth to the PEOPLE.
IN PA, we just had our lovely Governor Rendell say that NO ONE is responsible for losing their jobs, it is only a “wealthy few” who are to blame.
Does anyone not realize how dangerous that type of talk is? Sure, many of the rich didn’t act properly – but millions of citizens didn’t either. Unless we realize, accept and adjust to that reality, we haven’t seen the end of this recession by a long shot.
THAT’S what has Santelli and others like him in such a dither. I only wish more people would speak the truth.
Many of those who are “in over their heads” got that way because they trusted the loan official who said they could afford a home.
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I can agree that some of them should have known better, but it should be noted that part of their ignorance about how loans and interest work goes back to the anti-intellectualism that has been preached over the last couple decades. Many people today think being educated is for fools because that is what they have been presented with by the nattering nabobs of the right.
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A guy I ran into at the LCS the other day was bragging that he had flunked out of a private school, and that he didn’t need any education to carry on in life.
Jerome Maida said:
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“…a union that refuses to give an inch despite averaging $73/hour for a worker on the line…”
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Jerome, that isn’t true. The unions have been giving back for years. And the guy working on the assembly line makes around $25 an hour. That’s just slightly more than $50,000 a year. Benefits take the average wage to above $40 an hour, not $73.
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On the average American automobile, employee wage costs are 10% OR LESS of each sticker price. So let’s say you buy a car for $30,000. Even at 10%, the employee wage costs for that car is $3000. If the employee agreed to a 10% cut in wages, the cost of the car would be $300 less.
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And on a related note, the best way to raise your level is not to bring down the level of others. If the automotive employees takes a big cut in wages, bowling alleys, golf courses, vacations sites, boating manufacturing, restaurants, sporting and entertainment venues, and many other industries will suffer, too. Who uses most of those things? Many of the automotive workers. Certainly some of the upper class use boats and golf, also, but mainly the middle class.
In the words of a more trenchant observer:
If I were Jim Cramer, I’d punch Rick Santelli in the neck.
“This agreement helps us close the fundamental competitive gaps that exist in our business,” Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said. “There’s no question this was one of the most complex and difficult bargaining sessions in the history of the GM-UAW relationship.”
From CBS’s website in September:
“GM, which lost $2 billion last year and is in the midst of a restructuring, went into the negotiations seeking to cut or erase what it said is about a $25-per-hour labor cost disparity with the U.S. employees of Japanese competitors. GM has said it pays workers $73.26 an hour in wages and benefits.
By contrast, Reynolds reports, Toyota pays an hourly wage of $45.”
Also, while the price difference as you state it in relation to the labor costs may seem small – according to your figures – the fact remains many American consumers are refusing to buy from the Big Three anymore. From my mother who always used to say “Buy American” to the CEO of a company I know who could afford the price difference, is a lifelong Democrat and believes in employing people in the community and giving to charity, the refrain is the same: American cars suck in terms of quality and innovation compared to their Japanese counterparts. People are tired of not only buying more expensive cars, but the cost and inconvenience associated with repairs, maintenance, etc.
I would rather let the companies die and spend the billions to help those businesses you mention decide whether they can make it in the new reality that would usher in, close up shop and/or move. If they are good businesspeople, they will survive.
You put yourself out into the public like that … at some point you’re going to have a grounding moment.
Just the nature of the beast.
I don’t if you’ve ever had one to that extent Peter, but if not, at some point it will happen (which I’m sure you’re aware). As long as you don’t go the Roger Clemens route, you’ll get by it.
Thanks John streward for showing us what idiots the economist that supported Obama are.
“GM has said it pays workers $73.26 an hour in wages and benefits.”
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But it isn’t true. It’s propaganda. This number is inflated and also includes retirement benefits for past workers, which the company already should have set aside decades ago. Again, let me repeat, it’s propaganda. The cost of employees is relatively a small portion of the cost of the car. The American auto companies are very close, labor wise, to the Japanese auto companies, and in Japan, the auto companies DON’T HAVE TO PAY INSURANCE COSTS! If we had a national health care program, the American auto companies would be spending less than the Japanese auto companies on employee labor costs.
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“American cars suck in terms of quality…”
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Ford and GM are almost on a par with the Japanese companies. Most people WILL NOT see any difference. When the stats are published, they are listed as X number of complaints out of 100 cars. The difference between any 2 numbers in these reports is so small that most people would never see a difference. I don;t know the current numbers, but if Toyota had 89 problems per hundred and Ford or GM had 93 problems per hundred, most people would not ever know the difference unless they were hearing about it on a television news report. Not many households own enough diverse cars to be able to make an informed opinion, thus they rely on what they are told. And most of what we are being told about automotive numbers is propaganda.
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And I believe much of this propaganda is being expressed by the Right in an attempt to ruin the American auto industry because the American auto industry is unionized. The uber-rich, powerful people on the Right think that unions have destroyed the country, which flies directly in the face of actual reality. The formation of unions correlates with the improvement of society, the expansion of the economy, and the rise of the middle class.
I think we can argue all day about whether the wages of automotive workers are reasonable — I don’t think we can argue about the quality for cost of American cars. Japanese cars win hands down, both in terms of price and innovation.
Thanks John streward for showing us what idiots the economist that supported Obama are.
BAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHA!
Obama has been in office 2 months and he’s already being handed the blame for what started months before he even became the Democratic nominee for President – our economy going into free fall, starting with the housing bubble bursting.
Priceless!
And I believe much of this propaganda is being expressed by the Right in an attempt to ruin the American auto industry because the American auto industry is unionized
Maybe they just believe the “world will end in 10 years if we don’t do something about greenhouse gasses talk”.
Because if you believe that, one good way to forestall Armageddon would be to let the car companies go out of business. Automobiles are a huge part of the problem, yes?
Now, one might reply that it would be better for everyone to junk their old gas guzzlers and buy a shiny new hybrid, but form some sources I’ve read–and if this is wrong I’d appreciate anyone who can steer me right–there is not only NO savings on greenhouse emissions but an actual NET GAIN in said emissions when one junks an old car in favor of a new one, no matter how efficient it is. Consider–a car is not pulled forth from the earth fully formed, like Diana from the brow of Zeus. You have to rape the earth to get the iron, smelt it to make steel, do God knows what to make the toxic batteries essential for electric cars. there are all kinds of poisons and toxins and gasses that are part and parcel in turning minerals and plastics into a car. When that baby rolls off the factory lot into the showroom it carries a greenhouse gas debt that may never be repaid by better mileage and less dependence on gasoline.
So if we really want to save the Earth–and who wouldn’t?–we need to have the car companies go out of business. A luxury we can no longer afford. It is regrettable that so many will lose their jobs but surely everyone understood that you can’t eliminate all the technology required to actually put a dent in greenhouse gas emissions without a lot of people losing their jobs.
Perhaps there will be a thriving new industry in repairing the old cars.
Similarly, the arguments about immigration, legal and illegal, seem small stuff when we are talking about the extinction of human life as the oceans rise and swallow us whole. It’s a fact that Americans use a disproportionate amount of energy and produce a disproportionate amount of pollution. We need fewer Americans! And you don’t have to kill any or institute draconian population mandates or forced abortions to do it. just stop anyone from coming here, our population will actually shrink. So will the economy and the result will be less greenhouse gasses.
Will many be hurt by all this? Well, duh, but omelets and eggs. And the Earth is one big old omelet.
And yet…none of the people I see talking about global extinction and the end of civilization and all the other zombie-apocalypse-without-zombies scenarios seem to be advocating these obvious and relatively easy solutions. Almost makes you wonder…
Actually, many on the left were thrilled when gas prices were at their highest, because so many people drove so much less.
Letting the car industry die is an interesting option, but there are so many things they could be doing to boost gas mileage and use recycled materials in making the cars. One reason they have fallen so far behind other automakers around the world is they have been fighting and lobbying against more efficiency because they say it would cost too much to change their manufacturing process.
And there are more than a few points of difference between the car makers. Look it up on Consumer Reports. American cars consistently rate lower in several different areas that consumers are most interested in.
There’s no better way to recycle than to just keep an existing car running.
Melting a car down and reusing the steel takes out the mining steps but consider the pollution caused by the melting process, the energy it takes, the toxic gasses produced. And plastics are very hard to recycle, forcing us to use oil to make new plastics (and making more toxins as a result). (and the easiest way to boost gas mileage is to make the car lighter by using more plastic and less metal.)
Again, if the stuff I’ve read is true you could just about trade in a hummer for a new hybrid and you would not be able to make up the amount of environmental damages from the manufacture of the hybrid simply in gas mileage.
Anyway, if those on the left are thrilled with gas prices, why not propose a big tax? Make it permanently $5 a gallon for gasoline. The amount of tax raised will be considerable, as usage tumbles oil prices goes down so an increasing amount of the $5 will be from the tax. Yes, there would be protests but just send them another whopping $13 a week stimulus and hope they can’t do basic math.
Continuing on the theme of saving the earth…why are we trying to help people who are in over their heads with home mortgages? A high rise apartment in a city produces less greenhouse emissions and other pollutants per capita than a an equal number of people living in homes in the suburb. So since circumstances have allowed us to get them out of those Earth killing lifestyles why in heaven’s name are we trying to stop it?
If you’re talking about melting down a brand new Hummer to make a brand new Prius, then yeah, that’s completely wasteful.
But that’s an very, very extreme example. All cars get old eventually and people regularly get new cars. What’s generally proposed is that when people buy more their new car, they buy something less šhìŧŧÿ than a Hummer. If someone actually wrote an article talking about the wastefulness of melting down a Hummer to make a Prius, that writer wasted your time.
Honestly, if the cost of creating Hybrid cars will never be paid back by driving them for years… what about the cost of making a Hybrid bus? As someone said, we need less people driving to really cut down our emissions. And if we’re going to do that we’re going to want to have some sort of public transit that’s clean, efficient, and less full of scary hobos. Or maybe I’m just proposing that because I don’t drive and the public transit in my area is laughable at best (no buses after 7 on Saturdays, and no buses at all on Sundays).
But that poses an interesting question, what would it take for people to use public transit for even one third of all their transportation needs?
I can’t argue specific numbers when it comes to how people rate cars for Consumer Reports as I gave up on that magazine subscription well over 2 decades ago. Consumer Reports’s clients tend to be skewed in the upper middle class, not the common man who drives to work every day in the same car for more than a decade.
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A lot of pertinent information can be found in the Harbour Report, a good way to examine the auto industry. Harbour says the labor cost difference between an American car and a Japanese car is $600. And a better way than reading Consumer Reports is the J. D. Power reports on auto quality.
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According to the Detroit Free Press, 12-8-2008 “UAW wages are now comparable with Toyota workers, according to a Free Press analysis.” Changes have been made, but the negative propaganda continues, and uniformed people continue to eat it up.
When are we going to see the Ron Howard-directed film version of the interview, “Stewart/Cramer”?
“But that poses an interesting question, what would it take for people to use public transit for even one third of all their transportation needs?”
I drive 30 miles one way to work. The nearest crosstown bus is 3 miles from my house and over a mile from where I work, add in the several hours it takes the bus to go crosstown with all the stops and on surface streets, and by the time I get home from work it’s time to start the process all over.
Fûçk that. I’ll drive thank you. I’d love a more fuel efficient vehicle, but can’t afford one. I’d love to live closer to work, but can;t afford to pay off my current house, much less even pay the taxes on one closer to work…
When public transportation becomes much realistic and useful, THEN people will consider using it…
It depends on where you live. Here in WA state the bus is 2 miles from my house and the train schedule is pretty inconvenient. I grew up outside of Philly and the public transportation there was awesome. I could take a bus (two blocks from my house) to the train station, then into Philly’s station and I could go anywhere at any time. The schedules were great with buses and trains just about every half hour per route. I can’t get around out here without a car, but if I were back east I wouldn’t own one.
A significant reason for us being so dependent on oil is that so many of us Americans have set up our lives to live far from work.
As cars became common, gas became cheap, and an expansive road system spread across the country, travel stopped being a big deal. So instead of picking places to live based on where we need to be, we formed communities far away from our jobs and just accepted the extra drive to work.
This meant longer drives. It allowed us to create suburbs, where everone *has* to drive, so the family has multiple cars because there’s nothing in walking distance. This means bigger garages and driveways, which is more stuff that has to be built and maintained (also a fuel burner). Suburbs also mean that everyone has a lawn that needs to be mowed regularly, which is more gas too.
There’s also a social cost. Communities are way more homogenized than they used to be. Since people can now pick where the want to live within such a large range from work, everyone separates themselves out. I saw a study on this showing how communities have changed in the last 50 years. People choose their neighbors so much now, many don’t have to listen to opposing social or political views anymore, everyone around them has the same views.
Solution? I dunno. We’ve been building this lifestyle for awhile and people now think that a big house out of the city is the measure of success. I’m not sure about the best way to change that.
I didn’t write that in a plea for people to take public transit, honestly it was more to call attention to the fact that (In my opinion) there should be a total rehaul of public transit in most communities (especially smaller ones). It’s one thing in a place like San Francisco where you have the BART and the Metro and the bus system, there’s even a website to specifically trip plan how to use all three to get places… but it’s quite different in my community where I can’t even get a bus on Sundays.
I don’t drive. I’ve been putting off getting my driver’s license for half a decade now, and rely on my feet, my bike, and public transit. I live in a small town that has a centralized commercial district, so it’s very easy to get around on foot (even on rainy days like today). Because I don’t drive I recently had a very hard time finding a new apartment, as I have to live in town so I can walk to work, and the apartments in town tend to be quite out of the price range of someone who works two part time minimum wage jobs. I long for a public transit system that ran more than once every hour and a half, that ran until… say, midnight? from town to town (there are three very inter-connected cities that make-up the general area/community I live in), and ran just as late on weekends. But even more than that public transit around here has a negative stigma because of the sketchy people who ride it. If I barely want to hop on a bus without a driver’s license, it’s going to take a lot for someone with a car to want to do so as well. It’s not a question of the individual, it’s a question of the transit system.
It’s funny, really. I live in Denver, where we have a pretty good public trans system (with terrible management, imo). I also have a bicycle to get around to places where before it would be just a bit too far to walk and I would have to take the bus.
And even with the bike, and buses, and light rail people still ask me how I live without a car. “How do you get to X?” is a question I hear far too often… even as a bus passes by my apartment building.
Most people in his country are just flat out conditioned to the notion that a car is a necessity, when in many cities it isn’t.
OK, finally got to watch. We’re a couple days behind up here.
WOWW!!!!
Why is a comic asking the important questions?
Just wondering.
PS love the new layout, PAD.