Mike, I got your private message which conveyed my sentiments exactly and which I hoped, added to mine, would get the idea across when I e-mailed the request to Dave Kansas and copied Cramer to find another analogy. Cramer took umbrage with my comments and responded somewhat emotionally. (Apologies in advance for this lengthy venting.)
The irony is that he can identify with what happened to the Jews during WWII and took offense to my analogies, used to make the point about emotions and perceptions when equated to the financial world, but he cannot understand why some military personnel (other than the comic book heroes and legends in their own mind) and the anti-war types would find it offensive. It does confirm the studies that intelligence and business sense do not correlate to sensitivity of another's feelings on an issue and that egotism and ethnocentrism can block the human exchange. Obviously, he will continue to write in the same style but I do wonder why he never took a job that put his physical safety at risk. Maybe it's the same type of thinking that Prez Bill uses as "Commander-in-Chief". I think he missed the point that seeing a dead body is not the same as military and civilians dying by gun fire and shelling during a war and then equating it to making stock trades. Maybe I'm missing his point but I do not see the difference with ethnic/religious groups being exterminated during or as a result of a warring nations policies and equating those to make financial trades. (Minor historical point in this discussion but he implied that the Nazis objective was primarily the Jews, whereas my recollection of some reading on the subject is that the Jewish group was about 6mm of the 11-13mm killed.)
BTW, my response is not to get angry or give the "I'm not going to subscribe anymore" routine despite the reference to my thoughts and feelings as being "shallow musings" (a lawyerly tactic used to demean another's points). He believes he is justified in doing it and will continue to do so. At least now I know he has someone else's opinion on the matter. Simply, I will ignore those passages when I find them in his writings. I still enjoy TSC and his insights on trading.
I thought, however, I would show you his reply on the public board and let you and others form your own opinion on the issue if you wish to express one. One final thought --- he says that his writings are praised by decorated veterans. I would like to meet the guys who were in the ground forces at Bastogne, Pork Chop Hill, Hue or DaNang and agree that the style is appropriate. The biggest mouths and "gung ho" types I met in the military were not in my group which had to carry a weapon everyday and provide security. (It does change your perception of the world when every duty day starts with arming yourself. Probably a cop in today's cities could explain it better.) The "Gung Hos" were in the office jobs or something else distant from immediate harm.
I received the following on 8/3 and will provide the original e-mail to Dave Kansas in the following message:
<<WTD: This is ridiculous. Just plain ridiculous. First, I very much resent your Treblinka analysis as completely uncalled for. That was an atrocity committed primarily against the Jewish people for their being Jewish and had nothing to do with the war whatsoever. Your mention of SS I imagine is not to the front-line SS divisions but to the deranged and evil death squads, which, again have nothing to do with war. As someone who has both decorated combat veterans including my father in his family, and someone who lost relatives in the Holocaust I would
appreciate you keeping your shallow musings about the destruction of the Jewish people to yourself. As far as the use of war analogies in general, all I can say is that we have more readers in the military, including, again, decorated combat veterans, who praise me and my writing than ANY other single group, and that includes hedge fund traders. As a student of military history all my life, as a proud product of my family's dual role in both European and Pacific theatres, I think I can integrate the two in a way that brings the stock market's action to level of understanding that has been obscured for most. Finally, I simply don't buy the "You never saw death" stuff, as a hardened homicide reporter, covering hundreds of violent deaths, I can tell you that I have seen more than my fairshare. I don't allude to those, however, because that is personal and has no place in thestreet.com.
jjc>> |
