If only Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer had been sex partners and Cramer had beaten up Stewart the morning of the Emmys — only then, maybe, would as many Americans have followed Stewart vs. Cramer as closely as they've followed the Chris Brown/Rihanna story.

Reality is this: A big majority of Americans have heard of the Brown/Rihanna story, while less than half have heard of the Stewart/Cramer square-off, according to the latest Pew survey. (More Pew stuff here.)

A third of Americans, Pew's News Interest Index indicated, have heard "a lot" about Brown/Rihanna, compared with 17 percent for Stewart/Cramer, 14 percent for controversy surrounding GOP chairman Michael Steele, and 13 percent for the white-trash drama of Bristol Palin.

Unfortunately, all four of those stories were mostly entertainment, instead of news, so what did the poll results really show?

That Cramer and Stewart should have convinced Oprah to cover their tiff, because she jumped all over the Brown/Rihanna case to capitalize, as usual, on domestic violence. Stewart's such a little guy that alpha-maniac Cramer would have beat the shit out of him, so Oprah's audience would have given Stewart the sympathy — and better ratings for the Daily Show, no doubt.

Or try on this Pew poll result: Only about half (48 percent) of the public say they "followed news about conditions of the U.S. economy very closely last week." About 33 percent more say they followed that news "fairly closely." That leaves about 18 percent of the public who watch too many fictional soap operas, instead of real ones.