Rick Sanchez calls Jon Stewart a "bigot," makes anti-Semitic remarks, and is fired by CNN

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've always found (now ex-)CNN host Rick Sanchez to be something of a loose cannon, and yet sometimes an admirable one, but he completely lost it yesterday on Pete Dominick's radio show. "I think Jon Stewart's a bigot," he said, and Dominick, who used to work for The Daily Show doing audience warm-up, understandably asked him to explain:

Dominick: How is he a bigot?

Sanchez: I think he looks at the world through, his mom, who was a school teacher, and his dad, who was a physicist or something like that. Great, I'm so happy that he grew up in a suburban middle class New Jersey home with everything you could ever imagine.

Dominick: What group is he bigoted towards?

Sanchez: Everybody else who's not like him. Look at his show, I mean, what does he surround himself with?

Sanchez then changed "bigot" to "prejudicial" and "uninformed." And later in the show, he offered this gem:

I'm telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority? Yeah.

I love Jon Stewart, but I certainly don't think I need to defend him against these charges. He is obviously not a bigot or prejudicial, and he's extraordinarily well-informed.

You probably don't like him (to put it mildly) if you're Republican and/or conservative, but that's only because he tells it like it is and therefore makes you look bad.

But Sanchez? Was he just upset that Stewart makes fun of him from time to time? Well, he deserved to be made fun of, what with his on-air antics (remember when he had himself tasered?) and foot-in-mouth style. (I rarely ever watched his show, but I did sometimes find his eccentric approach a welcome departure from the usual media nonsense.)

Whatever the case, he obviously just lost it on Dominick's show, perhaps letting his inside voice come out, something a TV personality should be able to control, perhaps venting what had been building up for some time. It makes you wonder if he's either unstable or having problems in his personal or professional life.

Did he really think that attacking Jon Stewart would go unnoticed or that what he said was at all appropriate and that he'd be defended for speaking out like this?

Anyway, CNN has fired him -- and rightly so. It wasn't just his attack on Stewart, after all, it was his attack on CNN and his anti-Semitic remarks about Jews. Now, he may be right, more or less, that Jews are not an oppressed minority, but the sarcasm of his comment was inappropriate and it's just plain wrong that Jews run the media, a standard anti-Semitic accusation.

So he's either got a screw loose or he's a bigot himself -- or both. And that just isn't acceptable -- unless, of course, you work for Fox News, where it's all just par for the course.

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You can find a lot more reaction over at Memeorandum.

Update: Transcript at The Wrap.

Sometimes an opinion is just a lie

By Capt. Fogg

It's going to get harder for Fox News to hide behind the giggles, the puffed up pretense to being offended and accusations of insanity if more of the other networks begin to fight back against Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes's lie machine. Brad Blog covers CNN’s Rick Sanchez's slapdown of Fox. Sanchez, who seems of late to be more willing to speak up against injustice went after Fox's Washington Post ad claiming it was the only network to cover the 9/12 "tea party" in Washington.

It's good to see someone get mad at the ever increasing torrent of lies, distortions, and false claims emanating from Fox. It's going, as I said, to get harder to call the few vocal opponents like Olbermann and even Jon Stewart crazy or inconsequential if CNN is willing to run ads, as they did yesterday evening, accusing Fox of "Distorting Not Reporting."

The people who send me wingnut e-mails about things that are designed to outrage the ignorant often preface them with "why isn't the MSM covering this?" -- although usually they are and have been. Fox's WaPo ad seems to have been the "enough is enough" trigger, and even ABC declared it "demonstrably false." The claim that no other networks were there was deemed by the Post to be an expression of an opinion not a lie, which of course doesn't help their credibility, regardless of what they claim the meaning of the word "is" is. Sanchez, concluding his diatribe, said this:

Let me address the Fox News Network now, perhaps the most current way that I can -- by quoting somebody who recently used a very pithy phrase. Two words, that's all I need. "You lie."

Lets hope it becomes a movement. Let's hope the Glennbeckery, the outrageous liberties taken with the news, have finally pushed the timid competition into speaking out for the truth, they way they're supposed to.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Angry Sanchez: CNN anchor takes on leading health-care reform opponent

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yesterday, I suggested that CNN, hardly a most trusted name, may, with respect to health-care reform, be in bed with Big Insurance. (Say it ain't so! Sanjay Gupta's network would never sell out! Of course not.)

Well...

Behold...

Rick Sanchez.

Who admirably and justifiably, and with the facts at his side, yesterday slammed Rick Scott, a former hospital CEO who's now, predictably enough, one of the leaders of the anti-reform movement.

Watch the video below. One of the highlights:

Some would argue, and it would be hard to say they're wrong, that you would be the poster child for everything that's wrong with the greed that has hurt our current health care system.

Well put, Rick Sanchez. (I realize that he doesn't speak for the network itself, but it's refreshing when the media don't spend all their time spewing right-wing talking points or otherwise resorting to the usual banalities.)