Stewart Owned Cramer

Who won last night’s cable grudge match between Jon Stewart and CNBC’s Jim Cramer? Let’s go to the scorecards:

• Stewart was the clear winner, clobbering his guest with “homespun, regular-guy relentlessness,” Maureen Ryan writes in the Chicago Tribune. “Cramer didn’t know what hit him.”
• The weird part was that Cramer barely defended himself from “Crossfire Jon,” Howard Kurtz says in the Washington Post. “Cramer was playing rope-a-dope while Stewart swung away. It was a mismatch.”

• The so-called epic showdown “felt like a Senate subcommittee hearing,” says Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times. Stewart treated Cramer like a subpoenaed CEO, acting out “a cathartic ritual of indignation and castigation.”
• James Poniewozik, in Time, eschews the who-won debate. "Dance in the streets with Cramer's trophy head held aloft if you like,” he says—but this wasn’t some grudge match, it was a fascinating discussion about how American journalism works. “This song is about us.”

(More Jon Stewart stories.)