Jon Stewart chastises Jim Cramer on 'The Daily Show'

The "weeklong feud of the century" reached its climax Thursday night as Jon Stewart welcomed freshly minted nemesis Jim Cramer to "The Daily Show." Cramer, who hosts the CNBC show "Mad Money," had figured heavily in a "Daily Show" piece highlighting that network's poor track record on the financial apocalypse, an attack originally inspired by reporter Rick Santelli's diatribe against over-leveraged homeowners. ("If I only followed CNBC's advice," Stewart said then, "I'd have a million dollars today -- provided I'd started with $100 million.") When Cramer objected publicly to what he considered unfair treatment, Stewart and his writers, smelling comedy blood, turned their sights toward him. Or, as the host described it last night, "We threw some Boston cream pies at CNBC, you got a little, obviously, shmutz on your jacket from it, you took exception, and then we decided to hit you with pies."

Cramer throws actual pies on "Mad Money," a kind of over-excited video version of a drive-time radio show on which fans call up from an imaginary place called "Cramerica" to give him a "Boo-ya!" and ask what they should do with their money. The CNBC online store sells a talking Cramer bobblehead that screams "Buy! Buy! Buy!," "Sell! Sell! Sell!" and "Are you ready, Skee-daddy?"

The back-and-forth generated a lot of Web hits to the Comedy Central page and comments among the punditry, taking on a patina of "news" and turning a comic riff into a self-inflating media moment: "People on TV have talked about how much people on TV have talked about it," "Daily Show" announcer Drew Birns intoned with customary mock gravity at the opening of last night's show, which was being pitched like some WWE grudge match, excited certainly by memories of Stewart's 2004 dust-up with Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala of CNN's "Crossfire."

Stewart's point this time was much the same: that CNBC practiced irresponsible journalism while selling itself as a source of superior insight and information. "You should be buying things and accept that they're overvalued but accept that they're going to keep going higher," Cramer said in one of the clips Stewart had earlier hurled against him, noting, "I probably wouldn't have a problem with CNBC if Cramer's slogan was 'Cramer: He's right sometimes,' or 'Cramer: He's like a dartboard that talks.' "