It cannot have escaped the Ministry’s followers that a certain John Stewart is starting to make something of a name for himself across the pond for managing to cram into his half hour nightly satirical programme, The Daily Show, something almost the entire news media in the US have failed to produce for a very long time: competent journalism.

In the Minister’s absence I commend to you the three clips of his half hour interview with Jim Cramer, presenter of Mad Money on CNBC and Timmy Mallet-style flag-waver for corporate greed.  Cramer got caught by Stewart’s researchers fiddling while Rome burned last year and making consistently bad calls, betraying evidence of what Stewart read to be at best gross negligence and at worst criminal complicity.  Cramer at first protested that he wasn’t going to take a comedy show’s comments on financial matters seriously but, after recidivism from Stewart,  it came to a head last Thursday night when Cramer appeared face to face with his tormentor on The Daily Show.

Maybe Cramer expected a bit of fun at his expense and figured his financial knowledge could enable him to wriggle out of any serious criticism that might come his way with technical obfuscation.  What he got, could best be described as a session in the public stocks from a furious Stewart, who surprised Cramer with his remarkable grasp of corporate logic and refusal to take any woolly fobbing off from Cramer.  The result is uncomfortable viewing, but a real shot in the arm for American democracy, as the ensuing furore enables millions and millions of people to begin to understand just that little bit more about how the world works.