In Defense of Erin Burnett

Give me a break. When I got my copy of Men's Health in the mail a few weeks ago--yes, I subscribe and you can see from my sketch how religiously I follow its teachings about six-pack abs--I saw a one-paragraph, tiny item by Erin Burnett about things she'd like getting from a guy. Okay, so the stuff she was interested in tended to be on the pricey side--private yoga lessons, business-class tickets to Australia for her family, a private chef to make some meals, a spa weekend for her and her sisters. Tell me that if Jim Cramer hadn't put on his wishlist, a Ferrari and a Patek Phillippe watch it would have been a big deal? There's a sexist element to this.

Besides, I keep CNBC on enough in the background to know that the Burnett persona that CNBC (and MSNBC) has cultivated--earthy but serious, fun but pointed, raised on a chicken farm on the rural eastern shore of Maryland but with a prep school pedigree and a Williams degree and a field hockey stick and a command of financial issues is not out of keeping with someone who'd want private yoga lessons. For the network brass to be shocked that she'd want something more than a movie and popcorn shouldn't be surprising. Look, she's had some whoppers on the air like the moronic comment about Chinese toys that's not to be missed. But hey anyone who's on TV for hours a day is going to say something goofy. This thing she wrote isn't one of them.