BIO

Cliff Mason is the author of Millennial Money. He is the Senior Writer of CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer, and has been that program's primary writer, in cooperation with and under the supervision of Jim Cramer, since he began at CNBC as an intern during the summer of 2005. Mason was the author of a column at TheStreet.com during 2007, which he describes as "hilarious, if short-lived." He graduated from Harvard College in 2007. It was at Harvard that Mason learned to multi-task, mastering the art of seeming to pay attention to professors while writing scripts for Mad Money. Mason has co-written two books with Jim Cramer: Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich and Stay Mad For Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer). He is 100% responsible for any parts of either book that you did not like. Mason has also had a fruitful relationship with Jim Cramer as his nephew for the last 23 years and will hopefully continue to hold that position for many more as long as he doesn't do anything to get himself kicked out of the family.

MILLENNIAL MONEY RELATED LINKS

LATEST FROM OUR BLOGS

» More

RSS FEED

» Help

Subscribe to this RSS feed
Stay up to date with the Millennial Money blog.

Text Size

Feb.18

10:33 AM ET

Wednesday, 18 Feb 2009

Who's Right: Kid Rock Or Pauly Shore?

Posted By:Cliff Mason

Topics:Employment | Stock Market

nationalguardwarrior.com
Kid Rock for the National Guard
I went to see a movie yesterday for the first time in a while, and before the film started I was treated to lengthy recruiting advertisement for the National Guard/Kid Rock video.

You've probably seen this peculiar mishmash of race cars, combat, and a musician who was popular when I was in middle school (yes, I'm only 24 but I thought these people had expiration dates if they were legit).

I started laughing hysterically until my girlfriend, "the steamroller," glared at me, but I suppose this ad could appeal to a certain species of 17 going-on 18 year-olds. If that's you or if that's your kids, stay away from the National Guard! Join the Army if you want to take a trip to Mesopotamia, that way you get better pay and better body armor.

I may not have the cred of Kid Rock, but I can remember back when the National Guard's slogan was "one weekend a month, two weeks a year." Now it's more like six months in Iraq a year. Hopefully that ends soon.

Still, if you really need the money, this isn't the sixties, when joining the National Guard was a great way to avoid combat. These days you might as well be signing up to Army.

Now that the economy's collapsed, which happens to be great for recruitment, we don't see advertisements for the Army or the Marines anymore, they don't need help filling positions.

But those are the positions you want, just read my post about Stripes. What you don't want to be is a "citizen soldier" who lets Kid Rock recruit him into a seemingly cushy national guard gig and then gets shipped off overseas.

They made a movie about that too, only it didn't star Bill Murray. It was "In The Army Now" with Pauly Shore. Watch 'em, you'll see what I mean.