This is a Smackdown
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCQ9xb4CBeI[/youtube]
I do like Robert Gibbs. And does anyone else find it odd that Rick Santelli is declaring that that room full of Wall St. traders is America?
Tags: Barack Obama, Liberal Media, The Economy
Loved the decaf line.
CNBC is s disgrace to journalism.
Ok. Lets Review. Santelli was lovin the 700 billion his Wall Street friends got. That was America. But Main Street gets 10% of that, and he flips out.
Fuck you Santelli. It was you and your Wall Street friends that caused the global economy to collapse. You got bailed out. You have no right or invitation to cry now.
I thought Santelli had a lot of nerve, calling a lot of Americans “losers.” Way to show compassion, jerk. I felt the same way about the stimulus bill. Republicans made a big show about voting “no” to give money to help ordinary Americans but voted to give money to big banks. I think we know where their priorities lie.
This just shows the difference between the parties right now. Republicans blame everyday Americans and Democrats blame Wall Street Welfare Queens.
Welfare ‘Kings’…unless you meant ‘Queens’.
Ezra Klein writes a great response, I think:
Santelli sells himself as a sort of financial sector Howard Beale: He’s mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore. The problem is he’s on the trading floor of a stock exchange surrounded by the very masters of the universe who started this mess. It’s a strange setting for a populist rant; as if Beale had been mad as hell at anchors who insisted on reporting important, rather than ratings-driven, stories, and had delivered his impassioned speech surrounded by whooping network executives.
But watching the traders hoot and cheer as Santelli calls for the streets to run green with the equity of the working class offers offers nice insight into the psychology of the crisis. These traders feel betrayed. They didn’t default on their homes! They trusted Americans to be responsible and they were burned for it. Yet they endure the brickbats and jeers while the irresponsible homeowners who triggered the crisis are turned into objects of sympathy. It’s unfair.
Pretending that what what Santelli is doing here is in any way populist is to basically render the word meaningless.
And can I say that I just love Robert Gibbs (so far) — he’s been really good at swatting back at this kind of idiocy of the pundit class while never giving ground on the rhetorical framing. A skill he ought to be cloning furiously among Democrats, I think.
Santelli was filmed on Chicago trading floor, not Wall Street. Probably mostly commodities traded there if I am not mistaken.