I don't think this was totally without precedent; Stewart is usually jokey and handles his guests with a bit of the good-natured kid-glove treatment, but it's been seen a few times that when there's an issue he has strong feelings about, he'll drop that and become dead serious (about as serious as we wish the rest of the news media would be most of the time).

Unfortunately Kramer was the one that took the bait; I would much rather have seen Santinelli or whatever his name was come on the show to be sucker-punched instead. As even Stewart pointed out in the interview, Kramer has somehow become the face of this issue, which is unfair.

For what it's worth, though, I don't think this was a total loss for Cramer as an individual. It was hard to see him get the smackdown, yeah, but I think he's gotten a lot of credit for at least showing up for the interview, taking his knocks and issuing a few honest mea culpas rather than running and hiding like the rest of the CNBC crew seems to be doing.