Stewart's Right: Screeching CNBC Is Whacked

It should come as no surprise to fans of Jon Stewart, but CNBC is as hysterical as he says—and worse, Gabriel Winant writes in Salon. After 12 hours watching the network "I was huddled in the corner of my couch, wondering why the angry faces were yelling at me," Winant shudders. CNBC has become "notorious as a redoubt of shouting heads who insist the market is tanking because the president is an incompetent lefty," he notes.

After a day immersed in network shows, Winant glimpses a world twisted to meet the out-of-whack view of CNBC's affluent male audience. "In mistaking themselves for the country at large, and the bouncing of the market for the health of the economy as a whole, the talking-head crew give lie" in more ways than one to their pose that they represent a silent majority, Winant concludes. "CNBC feels like bizarro world because, in an important sense, it is." (More Jon Stewart stories.)