Jim Cramer: I Was Blindsided

"I am not surprised that the video of Mr. Cramer’s appearance doesn’t appear on CNBC’s Web site.” White House press sec Robert Gibbs gleeful reax to Cramer's drubbing by Jon Stewart.

Stewart v Cramer made the WH briefing yesterday? Amazing. But only because CNBC hosts Cramer and Rick Santelli took on the WH in recent weeks.

Cramer claims he Stewart screwed him over big time. Howard Kurtz Wash Post: Cramer has told colleagues he felt blindsided by Stewart's hostile approach. But many CNBC staffers were furious with Cramer yesterday for failing to defend the network's reporting or to criticize Stewart's video clips as selectively edited or out of context. CNBC declined all interview requests, saying in a statement: "CNBC produces more than 150 hours of live television a week that includes more than 850 interviews in the service of exposing all sides of every critical financial and economic issue. We are proud of our record." Cramer used an analogy to the college basketball playoffs to depict himself as the underdog. "When you are a Big East team and you are 16th seed in the Western Regional, you just want to leave with your head intact," he said by e-mail. "When I walked out, I checked in the mirror. It was still attached. So I am thrilled to have been in the tourney."

It was pretty obvious going in - given Stewart's tactics - that Cramer would be able to take a watermelon up his ass when Stewart got through with him.

Why CNBC brass - let's go up the NBC food chain to NBC prez Steve Capus - would permit loose cannon master of his own domain but Jell-O outside his comfort zone Cramer to become the face of CNBC is beyond my comprehension. I take that back. CNBC's marquee "Mad Money" manic-depressive Cramer was offered up after CNBC canceled rookie Rick "Chicago Tea Party" Santelli's scheduled duel with Stewart. CNBC thought (wrongly, as it turns out) that throwing an undisciplined, unstable gladiator Cramer into Stewart's lion's den would bring more viewers into CNBC's ampitheatre. Create media buzz even if Stewart ate Cramer alive. But Stewart flayed and quartered Cramer by nailing him with a three-year-old video where Cramer bragged about how he manipulated the market when he was a hedge fund manager. Make that Stewart was the Venus Flytrap to Cramer's fly.

Baltimore Sun TV critic Dave Zurawik: "... what a remarkable public service the Comedy Central comedian performed in gutting Cramer, CNBC and parts of the business news press corps before millions of viewers. And this on a half-hour cable comedy TV show... I am not sure Cramer understood that he had been shamed and was now being dismissed in much the same way that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was during the televised Army-McCarthy hearings when Army attorney Joseph Welch said to McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” That landmark moment, which came in 1954 during one of the first live political telecasts in TV history, was the beginning of the end of the once-powerful witch-hunting senator.I am not sure that as a culture we care any more about trying to live without bringing shame to ourselves. But if there is a shred of that concept left, what happened last night on The Daily Show should be the beginning of the end for Cramer. It should also be a clarion call for NBC to order the reform of its cable news channel before any more damage is done to it and the once great NBC News brand under which it operates.

"Cramer Turned Into Punch Line" Phil Rosenthal Chicago Tribune.

Ken Tucker Entertainment Weekly: "You could almost see the blood drain from Cramer's face every time the camera returned to him in the studio with Stewart."

Variety's Brian Lowry: That might have been the most foolish appearance by someone whose name sounded like "Cramer" since "Seinfeld" went off the air... the old adage that "There's no such thing as bad publicity" appears not to be operable here -- at least not yet, anyway. Based on Nielsen data, ratings for Cramer's program and CNBC have actually dropped marginally since Stewart delivered his first rant -- a little surprising, given that one might have expected all those web links to prompt some tune-in out of curiosity. Then again, the channel's audience is relatively puny -- averaging 0.3% of U.S. households. CNBC is still standing, but the foundation looks shakier than before this whole brouhaha began. And Cramer and the rest of his colleagues have been publicly schooled on what a truly tough interview looks like.

Felix Salmon Portfolio Market Movers: "... it's a shame that Stewart had on his show the most self-loathing of all the CNBC personalities -- but then again he, too, had little choice, since Santelli cancelled on him. But the 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. Doing so will do you no good at all, and will quite possibly do you a lot of harm... CNBC is a cable channel where the closer you get to it, the more unpleasant it seems... no good can come from that thing. Don't watch it.