Jim Cramer sure got his assets handed to him tonight. On Thursday, in an extremely hyped culmination of a week's worth of finger-pointing, insult-exchanging and lamentation over the U.S. stock market, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took the Mad Money host to task in no uncertain terms.
"I understand that you want to make finance entertaining, but it's not a f--king game," Stewart said, one of a series of hardballs he tossed at Cramer, who strode into the studio looking as if he'd been brawling in the hallway, sleeves rolled up and prominent brow already glistening.
And Cramer's voice may have even cracked a few times as he uselessly tried to defend himself against Stewart's sobering critique of the CNBC star's on-camera treatment of the prevailing economic mess.
"I can't reconcile the brilliance and knowledge you have of the intricacies of the market with the crazy bulls--t I see you do every night," Stewart told Cramer, whose 2008 advice to snatch up shares of the since-failed investment bank Bear Stearns was the clip du jour on The Daily Show all week.
"Don't you want guys who have been in it like me to show the shenanigans?" protested Cramer, who, by the way, set a record for use of the word shenanigans in a 12-minute interview (an uncut version of which will be available on ComedyCentral.com tomorrow).
"We all should have seen it more," Cramer said, referring to his fellow financial newshounds and pundits.
But Stewart didn't buy the whole shenanigans argument, anyway.
"Now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that no one could see coming is disengenous at best and criminal at worst," the Emmy-winning ball-buster said.
Ultimately, Cramer vs. Stewart (aka Not Cramer) probably won't result in a massive shift in the way real cable news works, but at least The Daily Show can say it tried.
"So," Stewart concluded, "maybe we could remove the 'financial expert' and the 'in Cramer we trust' and start getting back to fundamentals on the reporting, as well, and I can go back to making fart noises and funny faces."
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