It wasn't "Brawl Street" or a thrilla in vanilla. It wasn't a "Daily Show" friendly feud or even much of a discussion. Mostly, the much-hyped Thursday night showdown between the comedian Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer, the mercurial host of "Mad Money" on CNBC, felt like a Senate subcommittee hearing.
Mr. Stewart treated his guest like a C.E.O. subpoenaed to testify before Congress: his point was not to hear Mr. Cramer out, but to act out a cathartic ritual of indignation and castigation.
Congress has — belatedly and showily — gone after the leaders of banks, auto companies and insurance companies for their complicity in the financial crisis. Mr. Stewart has always had a messianic streak to his political satire, as when he ripped into Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala on "Crossfire" for "hurting America." He is now focusing on business news cable networks like CNBC, which not only failed to foresee the credit crisis, but also, in his view, sided with the bankers and helped inflate the bubble.
And while it's never much fun to watch a comedian lose his sense of humor, in an economic crisis it's even sadder to see supposed financial clairvoyants acting like clowns.
Part of Mr. Stewart's frustration may stem from the fact that while he clearly won the debate, Mr. Cramer and CNBC stood to profit from the encounter. In today's television news market, that cable network and its stars are like the financiers they cover: media short-sellers trading shamelessly on publicity, good or bad, so long as it drives up ratings. There isn't enough regulation on Wall Street, and there's hardly any accountability on cable news: it's a 24-hour star system in which opinions — and showmanship — matter more than facts.
Like a Congressional witness who knows better than to contradict senators in public, Mr. Cramer spent much of the interview (and it went long) ruefully conceding that he could have done better, and that he sure will try from now on, but really his heart was in the right place. "There are shenanigans, and we should call them out, I should do a better job at that," Mr. Cramer said, adding that he was lobbying Washington ("I have people in Congress," is how he put it ) to tighten regulation and enforcement. "I'm trying," he said.
Mr. Cramer tried to be friendly and looked a little taken aback by Mr. Stewart's prosecutorial tone — he might have been expecting a more jocular give-and-take. But mostly, he sat back and milked every last drop from a tempest-in-a-cable-box that NBC and its sister channels have been fanning ever since the "Daily Show" host began hammering CNBC for its complacent Wall Street coverage, singling out embarrassing market calls by Mr. Cramer in particular.
Once he had Mr. Cramer at his desk, Mr. Stewart showed fresh and even more embarrassing clips from a 2006 interview with the Web site Mr. Cramer founded, TheStreet.com, in which he too candidly explained how hedge fund market manipulation really works.
Mr. Stewart kept getting the last word, but Mr. Cramer may yet have the last laugh.
A picture on March 14 with the TV Watch column, about the stock market analyst Jim Cramer's appearance on "The Daily Show," carried an erroneous credit. The picture, of Mr. Cramer and Jon Stewart, host of "The Daily Show," was taken by Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times, not Jason DeCrow/Associated Press.