Rick Sanchez is a goofball without equal on cable news.
I mean, sure, there are many odd ducks who populate the cable airwaves, but none come off quite so benevolently odd as the host of Rick's List. The guy who acts like he's winging the entire program, saying whatever pops into his head, with an approach that's conversational to a fault.
Whether his career lasts another few decades or he retires tomorrow, he'll probably be best remembered for allowing himself to be tasered five years ago.
Personally, I'm partial to the time he pulled a Ron Burgandy, and readan off-camera direction that was in his teleprompter. Or his coverageof potential natural disasters. Or maybe identifying Hawaii off the coast of Ecuador.
Like I said, a goofball. Not sure Bernard Shaw or Miles O'Brien would necessarily approve, but maybe that's part of Rick's appeal. He's not one of those newsanchors who talks down to the audience because, clearly, the audience is smarter than he is.
Yesterday, Sanchez appeared on a Sirius XM radio show hosted by Pete Dominick (you would know who he is if you watched John King USA - so I'll assume you have no idea who he is). While there, according to Mediaite, he said this:
Dominick: How is [Jon Stewart] 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?
Clearly, Sanchez has some issues with Jon Stewart, and it's probably not hard to see why. Stewart critiques Fox News all the time, but the anchors there are so obtuse, they don't care that they're being mocked. And besides, there's precious little overlap between the Fox Newsaudience and The Daily Show audience. But I bet a CNN or MSNBC anchor would care, and would be hurt by a Daily Show slight. And probably no anchor on those two networks gets it more than Rick Sanchez. So does that make Jon Stewart a bigot? Why yes, it does. Wait, I mean ... NO, of course it doesn't.
It means Sanchez is apparently envious of Stewart's relatively cushy upbringing, and doesn't like being mocked by him. But maybe there's something else too. Remember, this is Jon S. Leibowitz we're talking about here. Dominick noted that Stewart is a minority himself. And then Sanchez said:
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.
Happy Simchas Torah, everyone!
lot of people who run the networks are Jewish. Rick Sanchez said this. In 2010. I don't want to dignify his comment with an explanation or retort, because it would only dignify it. But it was a shockingly dumb thing to say. For a major CNN anchor to say that Jews run the media (or a variation of that theme) is something you would hear an anti-Semite say. I don't think Sanchez is one, but it was an ill-advised comment at the very least. Even if it were true - and it's not - it would be offensive.
Rick Sanchez is a goofball, but if he's more than that, I think he needs to do some soul searching.