Jim Cramer's Contrition

Justin Fox conducted a sort of strange interview with CNBC'sJim Cramer last week. A lot of it was Cramer rewriting his appearance on Jon Stewart's show. The substance of that exchange, it turns out, was that Stewart is a big meanie. Cramer manages to lament Stewart's tone without rebutting any of his, you know, clips of Cramer talking. Remember this?

That's more than a failure of civility. Even so, Fox gives Cramer a compliment that he seems to get rather frequently. "He seems very capable of intense self-criticism on lots of subjects," writes Fox. But so what? Cramer criticizes himself a lot in interviews with the media. Then he continues to run the same show. Last week, he picked his new favorite stock: Yahoo! got the nod.

It's just a double game: Reflection in the venues that reward reflection, sensationalism in the venues that reward sensationalism. On the other hand, I was amused to hear Cramer say that the "only guy to really call this right was Marx." Guess that means his destruction is pretty much inevitable?