As much as I like Stewart, you have to admit this could not be a fair game.
First, Cramer came to Stewart's lair with a public sold to the cause of the Daily Show and Stewart's ability to roll whichever tape he wanted while Cramer was watching + the ability to cut and edit (which proved fair though).
Second, Cramer could only come in a repentant mindset playing the good guy, while he could not know if Stewart would go harsh or not himself. He had to play by Stewart's rules without knowing them.
This is a wonderful example of bad communication from the part of CNBC. In a decent company, their communication department would have immediately sensed the danger and asked their commentators to deal with it in a humorous way, avoiding serious reaction and laughing about it. Instead, they let it grow and had to react. And as they decided to throw Cramer as a human sacrifice to apologize as the good guy, they should have come with a stronger point to make.
Better at least than a 10 points memo:
- say you disliked the statement about bailout homeowners
- repent
- agree on everything
- laugh whenever he says something, specially about you
- repent
- avoid any attack ("I'm 4?" in the uncut version, wtf)
- repent
- say we should have done a better job
- repent