Schooled! Stewart Lectures Chastened Cramer

Jim Cramer's not the only one who's made some questionable predictions lately. When I heard that Cramer was booked on The Daily Show to square off with Jon Stewart, I wrote that Cramer was in for "a little ritual humiliation" but figured that Stewart would "go easy on him."

Um, no.

In the event, last night's interview reminded me of nothing so much as Oprah Winfrey's merciless 2006 grilling of James Frey. There was the same humble submission, the same abashed body language, the same vain expectation that if he was just meek and agreeable enough, the beating would be over quickly.

It wouldn't. Stewart was in full-on angry schoolmarm mode, more interested in whipping up indignation than in getting laughs. "You knew what the banks were doing and yet were touting it for months and months," he lectured. "The entire network was. So now, to pretend that this is is some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could've seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst."

I have to imagine CNBC's PR department was expecting a more welcoming reception for their guy or they never would have sent him. This was not much short of a disaster for them. Felix puts it this way: "[T]he lesson of this interview is that when CNBC is pressed on the way in which it has hurt America, its response is to capitulate and say 'well I guess that's true.' Which means that the bigger lesson is simpler still: don't watch CNBC.'"

Not that it was a triumph for Stewart, exactly. His initial CNBC takedown was so effective because it was funny; he's always less attractive when he lets himself descend into self-righteous moralizing. (Hedgelines takes a similar view.) By far the funniest part of last night's show was the intro: