As Ronald Reagan might have said, "There you go again."

On the Today Show this morning Jim Cramer was asked about his interview last week with Jon Stewart.  Check him out just past the three-minute mark:

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/03/19/cramer_stewart/index.html

Oh Jim.  Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Jim Jim.  Stewart stomped you like a beach bully going after a kid's sandcastle and you could barely defend yourself.  I watched the uncut interview and I felt sorry for you, with your sleeves rolled up and your shirt hanging on you like a tent and your hangdog expressions and your quivering and shifting around. 

Perhaps it was unfair for you to be made the whipping boy for your entire network.  But you took your beating and you went back to your show and the friendly confines of your buddies at CNBC.  Then you get asked about the appearance this morning and you say Stewart's attack was "naive and misleading."  Really?  Why didn't you say that to him on his show instead of fumbling like a virgin confronted with his first bra strap?

First off, you missed Jon Stewart's entire point.  He never said the media was "behind this."  He said your network acted like cheerleaders, not financial journalists, that you should have been more critical and investigative instead of just swallowing whatever lines your CEO buddies at Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs fed you.  That entire beating, and you still didn't get the point.

And second, are you trying to get The Daily Show to come after you again?  Has the furor died down too much for your liking?  You missed the attention, negative though it might have been, so now you want some more?  Well congrats.  I don't know if Jon Stewart and his writers will make hay of this, but you sure grooved a fat pitch right down the middle of the plate for them.

Look, here's some advice: Stop talking.  Just.  Stop.  Talking.  Shut up.  Those thin little horizontal lumps below your nose?  Those are your lips.  Do not open them.  Next time someone asks you about Jon Stewart and The Daily Show, clamp those lips together as tight as you can, no matter how much effort it takes.  Clamp 'em together until the urge to say something stupid passes.  Think about other things: your family, that morning's Wall Street Journal, unicorns.  Anything.  Because quite frankly, and I think I speak for America on this, we're tired of you and this whole debate. 

There is a lot of populist anger out there right now, and plenty of it is aimed at the media and the financiers.  Since you are both a member of the media and a financier, where do you think that puts you on the scale of the public's appreciation?  I'm going to say somewhere above Osama Bin Laden and below a highly contagious airborne strain of syphillis.  Not that there is such a thing as a highly contagious airborne strain of syphillis, but you get my point.

Or maybe you don't.  If there is one thing this morning's appearance showed me, it's that you have trouble getting a point even if it stabs you in the eye.