Cramer: I'm Not the Buffoon I'm Made Out to Be

Now you've done it, liberal critics: You've gone and hurt Jim Cramer's feelings.

The Mad Money host was a prime target of Jon Stewart's fierce CNBC critique last week, a widely-circulated clip that resurfaced in Frank Rich's New York Times column on Sunday, among other places. The Times's business pages called the assault, and others like it, "a testament to [CNBC's] relevance." Cramer, however, doesn't like being the face of financial-media cluelessness, for some reason.

"I'm uncomfortable being in the crosshairs of columnists and comedians I enjoy," he writes on Mainstreet.com. "So, why after toiling in the cable wilderness for four years with Mad Money am I the target of the wrath of the Obama clan, and the darling, albeit surely momentary, of the Obama-critics?"

Why indeed? He thinks it's merely because the Obama administration suffers from "a thinness of skin that shocks me."

Then Cramer goes on to demonstrate the sensitivity of his own hide. What hurts most, he says, is being misunderstood.

Take Frank Rich and Jon Stewart. Both seize on the urban legend that I recommended Bear Stearns the week before it collapsed, even though I was saying that I thought it could be worthless as soon as the following week. I did tell an emailer that his deposit in his account at Bear Stearns was safe, but through a clever sound bite, Stewart, and subsequently Rich -- neither of whom have bothered to listen to the context of the pulled quote -- pass off the notion of account safety as an out-and-out buy recommendation. The absurdity astounds me. If you called Mad Money and asked me about Citigroup, I would tell you that the common stock might be worthless, but I would never tell you to pull your money out of the bank because I was worried about its solvency. Your money is safe in Citi as I said it was in Bear. The fact that I was right rankles me even more.