This is rather troubling to me, as I have considered CNN anchor Rick Sanchez to be one of the saner voices on cable news [Edited to add: "sane" being a very relative term on cable news]. Perhaps not any more:
CNN's Rick Sanchez made controversial comments on a Sirius radio show Thursday, calling Jon Stewart a "bigot" and saying that CNN and the other networks are all run by Jewish people.
Sanchez was a guest on something called Stand Up With Pete Dominick, which I've never heard of, but then again, there are only about a million talk radio shows out there.
Sanchez seems to have a lot of vitriol towards his colleagues in the broadcast industry:
Asked by Pete about media balance and objectivity, Sanchez railed on the likes of Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly as well as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann for being partisan and not really doing journalism...
But he saved his most cutting remarks for Jon Stewart:
That’s when Sanchez really let his feelings loose: "I think to some extent Jon Stewart and [Stephen] Colbert are the same way. I think Jon Stewart’s a bigot."
Asked to explain himself, Sanchez (who is Cuban-American) continued:
He can’t relate to a guy like me. He can’t relate to a guy whose dad worked all his life. He can’t relate to somebody who grew up poor.
Some of this animus can no doubt be explained by Stewart's ribbing of on-air personalities, which include Sanchez:
At least part of Sanchez’s gripe with Stewart, he said, is that Stewart picks on Sanchez for superficial on-air failings instead of substantial offenses like those committed by Fox News personalities, and the Daily Show does this in order to be seen as criticizing CNN as much as it criticizes Fox News Channel.
Okay, so he's understandably resentful at being mocked by a comedy show. As a professional, he ought not to let such things get under his skin, but unfortunately he wasn't finished yet:
When Pete suggested Jews (such as Stewart) have at least some sense of what it’s like to be an oppressed minority, Sanchez seemed to make the claim that Jews run CNN and the news business in general and that Stewart thus did not in fact know what it was like to feel the sting of prejudice.
"Yeah," Sanchez snickered sarcastically at the idea that Jews are as much minorities as Latinos in the US.
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]
Sanchez obviously has quite a few personal issues, not the least of which is being a minority in a (still) predominantly white business. As I said in my opening paragraph, Sanchez has had some shining moments on air, mainly in calling out the worst deprivations of Fox "News", but he has really stepped in it here.
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EDIT: Just noticed that this has been previously diaried here. I will leave this up for now to generate discussion.
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Also wanted to add: why is it that so many "journalists" feel the need to give interviews and share their personal and political feelings? Don't they feel any need to keep such views private in order to preserve at least the veneer of objectivity?