The Daily Show

If you missed the Daily Show with Jon Stewart on March 12, be sure to check it out online. In fact, run and do it NOW! Because what you'll witness is one of the great tv interviews of all time. Stewart did a wonderful job of not being overtly antagonistic, while staying tenacious with a guest who was overmatched -- Jim Cramer of CNBC's "Mad Money."

I just thought Jon did an absolutely spectacular job. He nailed it in terms of how I think so many of us feel about the mess on Wall Street. He captured our outrage that our investments, our 401(k)'s and pension programs financed the "adventure" these guys at Bear Stearns and everywhere else went on in their short-sighted, short-trading orgies. I loved it when he told Cramer that his problem with Cramer's "Mad Money" antics were that "this isn't a fucking game." Absolutely classic.

Stewart also captured something else in his work tonight that I found most important. It ws subtle, but oh so very important. Our worth is based on work, not on quick money schemes. Somewhere, somehow, it seems like a lot of Americans lost the idea of work and its intrinsic value, beyond just the wages paid for it.

My father was poor as a kid, never graduated high school and has worked his ass off since he was 7 years old. He always has believed in that oft-ridiculed but seriously never trite concept -- an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. I remember a lesson he taught me -- "you make money for the man, and if he's any kind of man, he'll make money for you."

That got lost somewhere along the way I think. For many entry-level folks before the bottom dropped out, there was often a sense of entitlement, a sense of hey that work's beneath me. No one wanted to pay dues. No one wanted to do the grunt work and make their reputation. And so you get a bunch of people who didn't know what the hell they were doing.

At the same time, we had owners and managers who lost sight of the value of the people doing the work. Oh, they talked a good game about how our people are our greatest asset, but when push came to shove, the people on the front lines were just numbers on a balance sheet. They'd say we were a family, but you don't shove Grandma outside when the bills get tight, do you? But they did.

I come from a union family. Union wages put food on our table, clothes on our backs and a roof over our heads. My father and his father before him preached the gospel of organized labor and the glory of being a union worker from my earliest days. And it took. Union men and women built this country. Our periods of greatest prosperity coincided with the heyday of union membership. The great American middle class did not just materialize -- it was paid for in blood (sometimes quite literally) by union men and women.

But even while everyone was thriving, the rich owner resented having to share the wealth. They resented having to sit and negotiate fair contracts. They resented their kids sharing schools with the kids of those they employed. The blue-bloods NEVER bought in and in the era of Republicanism that began with Nixon and really continued through Ford, Reagan and Bush I and II (with brief stops in the action for Carter and Clinton) they got their opportunity to start taking it back. And they made the most of it.

And what have they wrought? Look at the newspapers (or least those that are left) everyday and you'll see. We're in sad shape, with an economy resembling a Third World country. Mighty General Motors, symbol of American manufacturing might is teetering on the edge of disaster. And union membership is at its lowest point in 40 years.

My point? I don't know, maybe it's just a rant. But Stewart's comment about the value of work, and thus to me, the American worker, struck a chord. We have to get that back, we have to TAKE it back if we must. Because we can't be truly great again, and truly realize our promise and purpose, to provide freedom and opportunity for all, until we get back there.