I’m well aware that the whole “feud” between John Stewart of The Daily Show and CNBC’s Jim Cramer is old news, but it’s not often I get an excuse – even a paltry one – to wax philosophical about the importance of healthy satire in a free society. Therefore, I’ve decided to use this forum to discuss that very topic. Besides, I really didn’t have anything else I felt like talking about this month.

I’m not going to go into all the details of how the whole thing started, subsequently escalated into a much-publicized war of words, and culminated with Cramer appearing in person on The Daily Show, where Stewart, by most accounts, made the Mad Money host his bitch. If you didn’t catch it, I suggest finding a reliable internet connection and checking out hulu.com. You may then resume reading this article after you’ve caught up with the rest of the class.

The only reason this whole thing got as big as it did is because, the day after Stewart initially skewered CNBC and their apparent lack of critical journalism in the weeks and months prior to the current financial meltdown, Cramer attacked Stewart. Not a smart thing to do.

Here’s a tip: If you ever find yourself getting called out from stage at a comedy show, don’t give in to the temptation to respond. You’ll only make things worse for yourself. The guy on stage is a professional comedian equipped with a microphone, while you’re an idiot yelling at a professional comedian equipped with a microphone.

Besides, like Cramer, you probably had it coming for doing something stupid, like talking during the set, not turning off your phone, or encouraging investors to buy doomed stocks just before the greatest precipitous economic downturn in three generations.

Had Cramer not followed his compulsion to respond, Stewart and his brilliant writers would have moved on to another target deserving of their ridicule. However, Cramer’s ego was so bruised by Stewart that he went on various shows within the NBC family of networks in an effort to defend his honor while dismissing Stewart as merely a comedian with a “variety show.”

The result was an escalation that made headlines and got people talking about the role of people like Stewart in keeping the media honest. Most media critics, like Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, think, as do I, that Stewart was brilliant in illustrating CNBC’s dereliction of journalistic duties. On his Sunday morning CNN show Reliable Sources, Kurtz called Stewart a “satirist” and a “razor-sharp media critic.”

Of course, not everyone agreed with that assessment. On that episode, Tucker Carlson was the lone voice of dissention. He actually had the gumption to call Stewart a “partisan hack,” which is the exact label Stewart famously gave Carlson on his show Crossfire not long before it was cancelled by CNN.

Great comeback, there, Tucker. It only took you four years and five months to come up with that? Nice.

I can’t say I’m surprised Carlson would badmouth Stewart. After all, Carlson looks like the kind of guy that would hire a Park Avenue hooker and haggle over the price of a BJ. It’s the perfect combination of snootiness, fiscal conservatism, and the fact that no woman would voluntarily blow a dude known for wearing a bow tie.

Personally, as one who regularly engages in high-brow satire (as demonstrated in the previous paragraph), I humbly believe that people like Stewart (i.e., satirists) are best equipped to cut through the clutter of intellectually dishonest punditry that’s plaguing this country like bad sitcoms on CBS. Our raison d’être is to call bullsh–t on public figures and members of the media. While unemployment in other job sectors is on the rise, our workload just seems to keep on growing.

Furthermore, I think the level of freedom enjoyed by a people can be measured by the latitude given to its satirists. Put more precisely, the number of sacred cows in a society that can’t be touched by political humorists is inversely proportional to the personal liberties enjoyed by that society’s members. Remember the Danish cartoons of Muhammad?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we’re all that and a bag of chips. A great satirist knows he should always be diligent to remain self-effacing, unless, of course, his onstage persona is that of an excessively self-loving blowhard like Stephen Colbert’s. In that case, brashness is the very key to comedic genius.

At the same time, though, it’s important to remember satire plays a vital role in America, and has done so since the birth of this nation. People tend to forget that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine – two of the greatest Revolutionary voices that helped frame the very foundation of this great nation – often wrote satirically. I can’t help but wonder if the Jim Cramers of their day simply dismissed them as nothing more than just a couple of comedians.