I'm not going to embed Jon Stewart's interview last night with Jim Cramer. From the lethargic way it's loading right now, it's obvious the Daily Show website is being inundated with hits. They've posted the unedited interview in three parts and if I embed all three parts here, this page will load at about the speed of Heinz Ketchup mixed with black strap molasses. So you'll have to go to that site and find it yourself to watch.

Note that they've posted the interview in two versions, each carved into thirds. One is the edited version as aired last night. The other is unedited and uncensored. The latter is probably what you want.

(P.S. Talking Points Memo has embedded the whole thing. It'll save you some time to watch it there.)

Every two years, folks in Great Britain celebrate Red Nose Day. What, I hear you cry, is Red Nose Day? Good question. It's a day when folks do something silly to raise money which goes to Comic Relief, a most worthwhile charity that helps the impoverished.

My pal Ken Plume and his pal Widgett Walls have decided this is such a great idea that they're stealing borrowing it and bringing it to America…and guess what. It's today! And lemme tell you about the silly thing they're doing. They're doing a 24 hour live webcast starting at Noon (East Coast Time), which is 9 AM out here where I am. There will be phone-in guests (including me at some point) and music and puppets and silly stories…all to encourage you to donate to Comic Relief.

Wanna know more about it? Wanna watch these silly guys in action? You'll want to go to their website and follow them on this Twitter page.

Tune in. It's gonna be silly.

You know, I don't really care what happens with Sarah Palin's daughter and her boy friend and whether they get married or not. It's none of our business.

But I can't help but think: If someone on the Democratic ticket last year had an unwed mother for a daughter, the whole G.O.P. campaign would have been about that; about how if your kid gets pregnant like that, you're an unfit parent and you should be ashamed of yourself for thinking you can run the country when you can't even run your own family.

I just rewatched tonight's Daily Show on which Jon Stewart…well, I started to type that he "spanked" Jim Cramer but that's not quite accurate. What he did was to give the financial news industry a civil and well-deserved scolding…and Cramer wound up agreeing with most of it.

It reminded me what I like so much about Stewart's interviews. I can't think of another person who just talks with his guests on such a one-on-one basis. I don't always agree with the guy but he seems sincere and thoughtful…and also uninterested in grandstanding. He talks to people — not at them, not down to them — and doesn't let his guests get away with pre-planned rote answers. Who else has ever had the kind of discussion that he had tonight with Jim Cramer?

A couple of e-mailers who watched the show told me they thought Cramer's career was over; that he'd committed professional suicide by grovelling before Stewart instead of getting into a slapfight with him. I think that's wrong. Cramer's not dumb enough to think that the old "act" is still viable and therefore worth defending. He and his peers have shilled too long for the CEOs and the lower-grade Bernie Madoffs. The jig on that is up and he oughta be glad that Jon Stewart has given him the chance to do a public mea culpa, pledge to reform and try to grab onto the new dynamic. I got the feeling the whole field of financial news reporting changed a little tonight…and for the better.

Some websites are reporting that the Stewart-Cramer interview had to be trimmed for time and that the full version, which is eight minutes longer, will be available on the web tomorrow. I'll embed it here when it is.

Bernie Madoff's confession.

Just watched The Daily Show — the face-off between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer. Watch it. Then watch it again. Stewart tells Cramer why his network is inept and does it so well that Cramer has no choice but to agree.

A couple of people seem not to have grasped what I was trying to say about this Jim Cramer controversy…and by the way, that skirmish is fast turning from a legitimate debate into a cable TV crossover stunt. I don't think it was premeditated in that sense but that's what it's become.

My point was not that pundits make mistakes or get predictions wrong. Everyone does, self included, and we all understand that. It's that you can achieve a stunning level of wrongness on TV and people don't seem to notice. I saw another version of this in the early eighties when I was working on That's Incredible! We were bombarded with approaches from folks who claimed to be able to predict the future via psychic vision or other paranormal means. Most were making a very good living selling, in one way or another, their prognostications…and of course, an appearance on ABC TV would have boosted that income through the skylight.

I happen to not believe in psychic powers or chatting with the dead or anything of the sort…and if I ever did, exposure to these people would have convinced me not only that it was hokum but that most of them knew that. Some, off-camera, seemed to no more think they could read minds than Penn and Teller think they really catch bullets in their respective teeth…and of course, there was zero guilt about the many (and some had many) out there who believed in the alleged psychic's ability, paid well for counsel and adjusted their lives based on what they heard. Some self-proclaimed clairvoyants, of course, did believe in their own abilities, having not only deluded others but themselves, as well.

You could understand how some got away with it. Through a combination of lucky guesses, careful phrasing and logical deduction, they could cite some "visions" that had come to pass…and that was really all it took: Some. The batting averages seemed to not matter. Five accurate predictions out of ten can be somewhat impressive. It's not proof of psychic ability, especially when two of the five are pretty vaguely worded and two more are occurrences anyone could have foreseen…but it didn't seem that odd that the "5 out of 10" psychics had substantial followings. What amazed me was that the "5 out of 200 (or more)" psychics had clients and devotees, as well.

All that seemed necessary was that you had folks who yearned to believe, that they were being told what they wanted to hear and that every so often, you were right about something. If they could get that, they'd ignore all the misses, no matter how numerous. That's kind of how it works too often with experts and pundits on TV. Being right once in a while is enough.

As you probably know, Frost/Nixon was a stage play and a movie, both starring Michael Sheen as David Frost and Frank Langella as the other guy. I enjoyed the movie (as delineated here) but had a lot of reservations about the way it portrayed certain true events.

The National Touring Company, which features Alan Cox as Frost and Stacy Keach as Nixon, has parked itself down at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles for a few weeks and this evening, Carolyn and I attended the first performance. Sad to say, I didn't much like it. The production is slick and well-assembled but I found it superficial and shallow, reducing its story down to the kind of conflict that gets resolved by one outta-left-field "gotcha" moment. David slays Goliath and snatches victory from defeat wholly because at the last minute, one of his researchers hands him a magic bullet in the form of a previously-unknown tape transcript.

That was one problem I had with it. Another, greater one was that I rarely saw Richard Nixon on that stage. Stacy Keach is a fine actor but you either buy him as Nixon or you don't and I couldn't buy him. Among other problems, he seemed too commanding in a movie star way. Richard M. Nixon was socially awkward (the play even says that a few times) and despite his many triumphs, always had an air about him of trying to prove that he belonged among the elite crowd. Keach's Nixon says that in so many words but Keach's manner is confident, charming and theatrical. There's that famous exchange when Nixon made a desperate stab at male bonding small talk, asking Frost, "Did you do any fornicating this weekend?" Coming from Stacy Keach, it sounds like a deliberate joke.

Maybe I'm too familiar with the material and the real events to warm fully to any shorthand or fictionalization…but it seems to me there's a deeper story there, having to do with Nixon's vulnerabilities. Keach does a great job of wringing audience laughter at the sheer disingenuousness of many real Nixon quotes but I just felt he was too good an actor to play someone who was that bad an actor.

Above is a photo I took in 1975 (I think) of Al Feldstein, who was then the editor of MAD Magazine — a post he held for 26 years. During some of those 26 years, the publication sold in the millions (plural) and did an awful lot to instill a sense of humor and healthy skepticism in a couple of generations. Before that, of course, Al was the editor and main writer for many of the great EC comics like Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror and Weird Fantasy and he corrupted America that way.

Al retired from MAD in 1984 and embarked on yet another career as a painter, mostly of western scenes. You can see a lot of them at his website and be very impressed. He's also been very active on the convention circuit, and I'm glad of that because it's given me the chance to interview him many times and to just get to know the guy. He's an amazing and important figure in the history of comics and humor. He was kind of brusque to me that day in the MAD offices when I was up there taking pictures but we've now become good friends.

Sad to say, my good friend is cancelling convention appearances for health reasons. He is awaiting admission to the Mayo Clinic where, if all goes according to plan, he will undergo one of them heart bypass things where they cut you open and reroute your blood. This should happen around mid-April and we're hoping it all goes well not for his sake so much as ours. We want to have Al around for a long time.

I expect it will. Matter of fact, I'm just posting this because I had the photo around and I figure it'll be quite a while before I get to use it on an obit.

I must admit I've been enjoying the spat between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer, partly because it's funny and partly because Stewart is doing something that doesn't happen nearly enough in the media today. He's pointing out when so-called experts were dead wrong. There seems to be no penalty — no recognition, even — when what happens is precisely the opposite of what was predicted. Erroneous punditry is shrugged off, not just by those who make the bad calls but by their peers and even by the viewing public. I believe this is called The William Kristol Syndrome.

Some web comments are making a big deal about Cramer's support (or lack thereof, in some ways) to Barack Obama, saying that this is "The Left's" way of punishing him for straying a bit from the reservation. I don't think everything in this country has to be viewed through the prism of being for or against Obama. Certainly, folks on either side of that divide are quite capable of saying foolish things. Mr. Stewart and his crew may be Liberal on most issues but those like Joe Scarborough who think he doesn't ridicule Democrats and the new White House occupant haven't been watching the show. (I think some of them are foolishly expecting or hoping to encourage that Obama in his first fifty days be mocked as much as Bush was in his last fifty days.)

Cramer is scheduled to appear tomorrow night on The Daily Show. I imagine he'll cop to giving out some advice but insist that in later broadcasts, which Stewart did not cite, he course-corrected some or all of that. That may be so but it will affirm Stewart's point, which is that if one listens to CNBC, one hears a certain amount of financial advice which later proves to be inoperative. I hope he doesn't take to arguing, as he has in some recent responses, that Jon Stewart is not a financial expert. We already all know that. Stewart was just trying to point out that some of the folks on TV who are sold as financial experts aren't, either.