CNN Fires Rick Sanchez For Anti-Semitic Tirade Against Jon Stewart
CNN anchor Rick Sanchez was fired after letting loose an anti-semitic tirade against Jews in the media in general, and Daily Show host Jon Stewart in particular. Here’s a transcript of Sanchez’s meltdown, which took place Thursday on Pete Dominick’s XM radio show. Sanchez was on to promote his new book, ironically entitled “Conventional Idiocy.”
Sanchez was reportedly out of sorts because he’s getting bumped from the 8 p.m. time slot for the new “Parker Spitzer” talk show. He admitted he was peeved at Stewart for continually mocking him on the Daily Show. E.g.:
Stewart: “I just realized something. Rick Sanchez delivers the news like some guy at a party who’s doing a lot of coke and traps you in a corner and explains really intensely how an ant is the strongest animal on earth. [Stewart begins imitating that type of guy]: ‘I’m telling you, man, they’re tiny, but they carry a stick! Like 78 times their own size! It’s like you picking up a car! Can you pick up a car? Answer? No! You can’t! Now, I’m going to go to the bathroom for a second, but we’re not done talking about how crazy strong ants are. All right buddy?’ The truth is, when Sanchez gets like this, there’s really only one way to handle it. We’re going to have to do this.” [Pulls a lever]
Sanchez’s “thesis” in the now notorious interview was that Jon Stewart is one of those racist, liberal, establishment Jews who can’t wrap his mind around the brilliance of Rick Sanchez because Sanchez is Hispanic.
The more parsimonious hypothesis is that Jon Stewart makes fun of Sanchez for the same reasons as everyone else: Sanchez is a buffoon. The cover of his book features a photo described by The Smoking Gun as “autoerotic asphyxiation” (pictured above). He fills dead air on his show by reading hours-old tweets from his viewers on the air.
When Dominick suggested that Jews are just as much a minority as Hispanics, Sanchez scoffed at the idea:
Very powerless people… [snickers] He’s such a minority, I mean, you know [sarcastically]… Please, what are you kidding? … 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.[sarcastically]
What Sanchez said next hasn’t gotten as much media play as the “Jews run CNN” allegation, but it’s even uglier. When Dominick implied that Jews can relate to the oppression of Hispanics because of their cultural memory of the Holocaust, Sanchez shot back that he hoped Jews fear a repeat of the Holocaust.
Pete asked, “They can’t relate to that? A Jewish person doesn’t have a constant fear in the back of their head that we could [inaudible] the Holocaust?”
“I think his father could,” Sanchez replied, referring to Stewart.
“I think every Jewish person feels that way,” Pete said.
“I hope so,” Sanchez responded.
The notion that Jewish people control the media is one of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes in the history of Jew-baiting.
Yesterday, Greg Sargent of the Washington Post bent over backwards to give Sanchez the benefit of the doubt. Sargent suggested that maybe, just maybe, Sanchez meant that racist white-liberals-like-Jon-Stewart-run-CNN, not racist Jews-like-Jon-Stewart. The foregoing exchange pretty much blows that theory out of the water.
Sargent may not have seen the full transcript when he wrote that. He appears to have been responding to a Huffington Post article that didn’t mention the Holocaust angle.
