Those two CNBC women

While waiting, with a break in the action, here's a major kudo for Maria Bartiromo. If anyone else saw her on Monday night, on a CNBC panel discussing the crisis given the House turndown of the financial package, you couldn't help but agree that she was brilliant. Eschewing the usual make-up and total do look, she unequivocally laid out the reasons for the public's view that the package was "bailing out Wall Street" while explaining intelligently and in a uniquely unpatronizing way why they were wrong. It was the coat check girl at her parent's Bay Ridge restaurant just giving it her emotion and best thoughts. Like I said, it was brilliant, a side of MB that we rarely see, but she's not only a pistol, not only the "money honey", she is passionately smart.

Contrast that with the new female star of CNBC, Erin Burnett. This jockette seems to think that she can get by on quips and elbows to the side of guys. She's no doubt normal smart, but she is routine, but now being groomed to gain a starring role based on her establishment approved Williams background. Listen to her, she has no depth, just the quips and the shrugs when she says something stupid, Sarah Palin-like.