A shallow CNN report about the Wolf of Wall Street controversy aired an hour ago. Anchor Jake Tapper mentioned the usual surface-skimming references — Christina McDowell piece in L.A. Weekly, some bloggers “calling on people for boycott the film,” Hope Holiday, Leonardo DiCaprio video praising Belfort, etc. I for one was hugely irked by the “industry perspective” provided by TheWrap‘s Sharon Waxman, who said that Wolf “clearly does not come down in judgment upon Jordan Belfort…at the end of the film he gets off, he’s teaching seminars.” Really, Sharon?

Earth to Waxman, Tapper: Wolf doesn’t “judge” Belfort in the Stanley Kramer sense of that term, but you’d have to be a drooling moron not to perceive where DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese are coming from. Not once did Waxman mention the drop-dead-obvious fact that the film is a metaphor for flamboyant 1% greed, or that it clearly portrays Belfort and his cronies as arrogant degenerates. Nor did she mention the final shot of the Aucklanders raptly listening to Belfort’s lecture about selling techniques. She just played right along with the report’s “oooh, controversial movie!” theme.

At one point the glum-faced Tapper said “I think this might be one of the problems [with the film}…these people [are] not being sufficiently punished.” WHAT? How many big-league Wall Street guys who were more or less responsible for the financial collapse of 2008 were punished? It’s appalling that this simple point wasn’t made.