I have railed against CNBC host Jim Cramer for some time. I enjoy him greatly as an entertainer, and when he focuses on the inner workings of the stock market, I think he does a pretty decent job of educating regular investors as well.

If that was all his Mad Money show professed to be - a vehicle to entertain and educate investors - then I would have no problem with his on-air performance and crazy antics. Unfortunately, the show also touts its ability to make investors money - mad money, as it were - and it is in that role that both he and the show fail regularly.

When it comes to actual stock and market predictions, I think Cramer has done more harm than good. He has made a ton of bad calls over the past couple of years on his show. And he has also changed his opinions constantly, going from bearish to bullish to back again within the framework of a few shows.

That's not entirely his fault - there's no way someone who produces a show every day can come up with good, long-term stock picks or correctly guess which way the market is going to move the following day. It's just not possible. Hell, even the best investors in the world - and Cramer was a great one when he was a hedge fund manager (although to generate those returns he clearly engaged in some of the shenanigans that he now rails against in his new role as 'man of the people') - get many of their picks wrong.

However, for me, the most troubling part has been that Cramer largely stopped owning up to his mistakes, something he did with refreshing frequency in the past when he was merely a columnist for his online financial news website Thestreet.com.

So I have to admit I was pleased to watch the Daily Show earlier this month finally take Cramer - and the entire CNBC network, really - to task for some of those poor calls, particularly his claim that Bear Stearns would be fine a few days before it had to be rescued by JP Morgan at $2 a share (the final price ended up being $10).

Cramer happened to take offense to the clip, saying he was taken out of context, after which Stewart and Co. put together a new clip that demonstrated even more clearly that Cramer was wrong.  it was great stuff, and a feud was born.

To his credit, Cramer agreed to go the Daily Show yesterday, and almost the entire episode was devoted to the mano-a-mano interview between Stewart and Cramer. If this had been a fight, they would have stopped it after two rounds. Cramer was annihilated by a deadly serious Stewart.

It was an ass-whoopin' and I even feel a bit sorry for Cramer, who has always seemed like a decent fellow. Some of Stewart's attacks - complaining about Cramer's wild on-air antics, for instance - struck me as a bit unfair. We're talking about a TV show, after all, not a college textbook.

But most of Stewart's complaints were right on the - ahem - money.

Watch the video and see for yourself (I've embedded Part I of the unedited version). Go to the dailyshow.com for the other two parts, which are probably even more fascinating.

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