Blustery CNN host Rick Sanchez was fired last Friday after comments he made the day before on Pete Dominick’s satellite radio show. Quizzed about Jon Stewart—the Daily Show host who has often thrown his spears Sanchez’s way—Sanchez said:
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?
Later came this (the final words leaden with sarcasm):
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.
On Friday, CNN released a statement saying, “We thank Rick for his years of service. And we wish him well.”
As with the network’s firing of Octavia Nasr, the Sanchez sacking has been controversial. Many have supported the move while others, like Christopher Hitchens at Slate and Matthew Yglesias, say CNN’s actions were excessive and the network was playing it safe and unfairly—Hitchens went so far as to call for Sanchez’s reinstatement.
Do you think CNN was right to fire Sanchez?
I think that the anti semetic sentiments that have surfaced as a result of his firing are misguided and unfair.Surely, the Jewish people are not responsible for all of the News reporting in this country and they don't own the News agencies as some would have us believe.
#1 Posted by Bob, CJR on Tue 5 Oct 2010 at 01:42 PM
Mr Sanchez. statement was right on the money.I don't know about calling some
one names.But the constitution allow it citizen to express them selfs.I feel that Mr Sanchez was responding to a question,a way from his place of work .How much control a boss has over the life of his employees ;off the job.There fore Mr Sanchez constitutional rights has been violated. I am of jewish decent and
I am not offended by Mr Sanchez comments.
#2 Posted by joseph diaz, CJR on Tue 5 Oct 2010 at 02:32 PM
I think employers are being overly politically correct, afraid to offend. If this incident happened outside of his work, then it is his right to express his own opinion.
#3 Posted by Jose LosBanos, CJR on Tue 5 Oct 2010 at 03:02 PM
I am going to miss Rick's List. Perhaps a "Sanchez Lists" will emerge listing us who pulled the plug on his career. Are they of Hebrew heritage? We (USA) should have conversation about Race and Media and discuss the "Jewish" influence within the various communication mediums.
Unfortunately, Rick made a stupid mistake by speaking on a "racy" show. Rick should have known of the "moral" corporate clause and just plain old common knowledge that you must be professional even outside the parameters of your job.
CNN perhaps should have suspended him...the "zero tolerance" principle purported sounds great but really supports the sarcastic remarks and escalates anti-semitic behavior and forces ignorance "underground" which will continue to surface.
Lastly, instead of debating, discussing, and vetting out bad information CNN has censored journalism. CNN thanks for aiding Fox News and abetting the racists to say "see we told you so..." I will be watching LinkTV and PBS from this point on...Rick remember the "Jews are Gods chosen people..."that includes Stewarts.
#4 Posted by Jesus Goldstein, CJR on Tue 5 Oct 2010 at 04:14 PM
They should have fired him for "How can you get a volcano in Iceland? Isn't it too cold?" or "Nine meters in English is?" any of those other retarded statements he made. Sanchez turned CNN into a laughingstock, and they enabled him because he looks like the kinda guy who could sell your mom life insurance. I wasn't surprised when I heard his hare-brained rant about Jews in the media, because we are after all talking about a remarkably stupid human being. CNN needs to stop trying to out-idiot Gretchen Carlson and Steve Doocy; that's a game you'll never win. There seems to be a perception out there that "middle America" doesn't like being talked down to by some high-falutin' intellectual, which I don't understand, because Walter Kronkite and Edward Murrow were embraced as sharp, informed "voices of authority." Rick Sanchez might be fun to drink beer with; how does that make him qualified to be a TV news anchor?
#5 Posted by Hardrada, CJR on Tue 5 Oct 2010 at 04:15 PM
This was clearly unfair I will not watch CNN anymore. I looked forward to seeing Rick Sanchez everyday.
#6 Posted by Sylvia, CJR on Tue 5 Oct 2010 at 04:56 PM
Even aside from the veiled anti-Semitic remark, and the errors about the composition of the staff of The Daily Show, Sanchez made slighting remarks about his own network so I think CNN was totally justified in firing him for that alone! Unfortunately, I'm not sure it was the smartest move on their part because it just makes him a martyr and will probably confirm his paranoid suspicions even further.
#7 Posted by JG, CJR on Tue 5 Oct 2010 at 05:01 PM
American Jews make up only 2% of the population of America. Yet: 46% make over $100,000 per year, they make up 15% of the U.S. Senate, 13% of the U.S. House of Representatives, 67% of members of the Board of the Federal reserve, 33% of the U.S. Supreme Court. Media: Just taking CNN only, 55% of corporate officers for TBS, which owns CNN, are Jewish. On air, Larry King, John King, Howard Kurtz, Eliot Slpitzer, Jeffrey Toobin, Paula Zahn, etc.. Rick Sanchez has nothing to apologize for.
#8 Posted by ActaNonVerba, CJR on Wed 6 Oct 2010 at 03:57 AM
What happened to freedom of speech???This is a vulgar display of double standard and injustice since daily blacks,latinos,gays,etc,etc are attacked by the media but oh,no please do not say a word about the chosen ones!!!!!Outrageous and ridiculous and hamful to democracy
#9 Posted by BRAULIO, CJR on Wed 6 Oct 2010 at 11:14 AM
ActaNonVerba, BRAULIO,
No question about it, jews do try hard to get ahead. Being jewish I can attest to the fact that they have to do it through personal effort as i have known no one who I can say got it just for being jewish. I use the lower case j to emphasize the difference between jews by ethnic identity and Jews by significant religious practice. For me the sense of antisemitism comes from the concept that jews in some manner support one another above al others. I can't say that that's true for religious Jews who are far more cohesive than their ethnic brethren, but I can assure those who may think other wise that we ethnics don't stick together as much as some seem to think. And neither is an
adherence to the idea of Israel right or wrong a universal idea among ethnic jews.
#10 Posted by Jack, CJR on Wed 6 Oct 2010 at 06:51 PM
CNN should of fired him long before he made these comments. It could be the case that these comments were like the straw that broke the camels back.
#11 Posted by LR, CJR on Thu 7 Oct 2010 at 03:35 PM
Yes, he should have been fired. CNN prides itself on being an objective news organization in the old tradition of seeking truth through facts. By showing biases, Sanchez can no longer be an effective representative for CNN. Credibility is very important to a news organization, and Sanchez has impaired his with an overly general, simplistic and biased statement. He has free speech to say what he wants, but CNN has freedom to employ who it chooses, and to act in their best interests.
#12 Posted by KLH, CJR on Fri 8 Oct 2010 at 12:51 PM
Here is a hint for Mr. Sanchez: Diss your employer in public, and lose your job. Not particularly surprising, not particularly a bad idea. I do think he was fired more for what he said about his bosses than what he said about Jews. But I do agree with Jon Stewart that not even Sanchez probably believes the garbage he spewed.
#13 Posted by JS, CJR on Fri 8 Oct 2010 at 08:27 PM
American Jews make up only 2% of the population of America. Yet: 46% make over $100,000 per year, they make up 15% of the U.S. Senate, 13% of the U.S. House of Representatives, 67% of members of the Board of the Federal reserve, 33% of the U.S. Supreme Court. Media: Just taking CNN only, 55% of corporate officers for TBS, which owns CNN, are Jewish. On air, Larry King, John King, Howard Kurtz, Eliot Slpitzer, Jeffrey Toobin, Paula Zahn, etc.. Rick Sanchez has nothing to apologize for.
#14 Posted by ActaNonVerba, CJR on Sun 10 Oct 2010 at 10:23 AM
The episode illustrates the sickness of 'identity politics' - that it can turn around and bite you and your 'group'. I wouldn't even know that Sanchez was had a 'Hispanic' identity if I didn't know his name. Same story with Jon Stewart.
This destructive politics - reducing issues to race and ethnicity and gender - arises from the sensibility of a significant sector of our upper classes that they lack an authentic 'identity' as Americans. So they keep looking for evidence of Cherokee blood or something to prove their own 'authenticity', not very different in spirit from the psychological motives that led similar people not so long ago to hide their 'African' or 'Jewish' ancestry'. Whatever their failings, the political 'Right' is trying to forge the idea that there is an 'American' identity that transcends ancestral roots and that is not merely adherence to the Constitution which is itself an effect, not a cause, of American identity. The Sanchez incident, like many another, shows that when you get into the rat's nests of 'italicized' American politics, then the favored groups of 'liberal' authenticity of identity - African, Hispanic, 'female', Jewish, whatever - will start quarreling amongst themselves to no good end for the country at large.
#15 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Sun 10 Oct 2010 at 01:32 PM
"Whatever their failings, the political 'Right' is trying to forge the idea that there is an 'American' identity that transcends ancestral roots and that is not merely adherence to the Constitution which is itself an effect, not a cause, of American identity."
Unless you're a muslim, in which case the noble political Right uses identity politics to bludgeon opponents into the ground.
Or hispanic, black, or gay.
Identity politics are not something you ignore, when people ignore them they turn septic and violent, they're something to recognize and move on upon. What I tend to see on the right is a desire to assimilate individuals into a homogeneous culture that is mobilized because it's under attack by liberals, muslims, gays, etc.
There are ways to share values with the different identities and constituencies that make up a diverse population, and it's not by sublimating those differences. You can share values by making compelling arguments for those values and by listening respectfully to the arguments of others. You can deprive differences of their power to be an issue by accepting those differences, recognizing the social realities created by those differences, and moving on towards mitigating those realities. It's sounds redundant, but it's true: differences will stop mattering when they stop making a difference.
Until then you will continue to have identity politics, resentment, and quarrels because the issue that underlies identity politics is inequity. And that difference isn't going away anytime soon:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/09/poor-people-are-much-poorer-than-you-think/
#16 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 11 Oct 2010 at 12:29 PM
'Identity politics' has been responsible for a lot of bad stuff. Most obviously, the Germans could not acknowledge that Jews were Germans, too - to concentrate on commonalities rather than differences. The race and gender Left is all about differences - no wonder the Democratic Party is so heavily subsidized by trial lawyers. My liberal sister defended the French expelling Roma and banning burkas on the grounds that the country was only defending its national 'identity'. That's plausible on some level, if you accept that there is a distinctively 'French' identity, even understandable. But she went on to deny that there is any 'American' identity. American liberals aren't any better than your cliched right-wingers (one wonders if you actually know any very well) at coming up with a cultural identity that defines what it is to be an American. Liberals get queasy at such questions in my experience - they tend to think they are above such petty provincialism.
The rest of your message is the usual boiler-plate, in which there are easy bad bigots and easy, noble victims in all political questions. Conservative Virginia got around to electing the first African-American governor ever 20 years ago, something liberal California hasn't done. After November there will be two state governors who are the children of immigrants from India - both southern Republicans. South Carolina Republicans picked an African-American over a grandson of Strom Thurmond in one Congressional district. American politics and culture is still too complex, it seems, for 1967 white liberals to grasp. The events above happened because of sufficiently shared cultural values. The great failing of your posts, Thimbles, and the chronic failure of the American Left, is that your opponents understand and can state your 'arguments' better than you can understand theirs. I think of the lady at an early Tea Party rally who sported the sign 'Whatever I put on this sign, the media will call it racist'. The political Right in this country is quite open-minded by worldwide standards. They just don't make 'tolerance', which can easily mean 'I just don't give a damn' into a fetish. You have to believe in more than just tolerance in order to create a common culture.
Until you can understand why so many people disagree with you, I'm afraid you will continue to be in a chronic state of political frustration. Doesn't mean you have to agree with them.
#17 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Mon 11 Oct 2010 at 07:11 PM
You want to talk about boiler plate rhetoric after 'Godwin'ing in your first paragraph?
Whatever.
"The race and gender Left is all about differences - no wonder the Democratic Party is so heavily subsidized by trial lawyers."
The left, screw off with the labeling btw you nazi, cares about protecting the individual right to exhibit differences within the limits of liberal society without social discrimination. And as someone who whines constantly about the real or imagined "discriminatory practices of the media based on political bias" you'd think you'd respect that, however the nazis didn't respect individual rights either so I guess I shouldn't hold my expectations too high.
"My liberal sister defended the French expelling Roma and banning burkas on the grounds that the country was only defending its national 'identity'. That's plausible on some level, if you accept that there is a distinctively 'French' identity, even understandable."
No, that's crap. As long as women choose to wear the burqua, their is no reason to mandate they shouldn't and as for the Roma, that's an immigration issue and not an identity issue. Until they have status as citizens or immigrants within France, their issue is not an identity one. It's a legal / security one. They are a class of people who are not cared for by the infrastructure of the state (the children are not schooled and they are not registered under health care) because they have not registered themselves.
"American liberals aren't any better than your cliched right-wingers (one wonders if you actually know any very well) at coming up with a cultural identity that defines what it is to be an American."
That's because there is NO ONE IDENTITY. That was the crux of my argument, that the definition of Americanism is the free hand america gives its individuals to define themselves. However, that free hand is only preserved when the state intervenes as citizens threaten it and citizens intervene as the state threatens it.
In order for a society to move beyond identity politics, identity needs to be seen as a characteristic of an individual, individual character being the defining trait. This is different from ignoring the differences or amplifying them as the sole defining attribute of a person.
It is the recognition of the individual above their identity, not the pretense that identity doesn't exist and isn't responsible for some of the societal problems we find today.
Tell me Mark, is this really too difficult for a nazi to understand?
#18 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 11 Oct 2010 at 09:47 PM
"Until they have status as citizens or immigrants within France, their issue is not an identity one. It's a legal / security one. They are a class of people who are not cared for by the infrastructure of the state (the children are not schooled and they are not registered under health care) because they have not registered themselves."
Nice to see you're in full support of France expelling Romas. I assume you also approve of the Arizona immigration bill?
Normally I try to ignore your comments, but this was just so blatant...
#19 Posted by JLD, CJR on Tue 12 Oct 2010 at 12:59 AM
How are they the same? One involves breaking up camps of people who are citizens of another country, the other involves the arbitrary stopping of possible citizens of another country / possible citizens of America without cause to check their paperwork. Nobody claims that the state has no business breaking up camps of illegal aliens when the search is warranted.
If Romas have paperwork that entitles them to be in France, then France has to respect their rights. If not, then Romas have to respect the rights of France.
Again, this does not mean I approve heavy handed state tactics upon the people that results in the ethnicity being cleared. What it means is that the context is different from standard identity politics since there are legal and security issues that must be considered.
And don't worry, I try to ignore you too.
#20 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 12 Oct 2010 at 01:49 AM
Thimbles, thanks again for unintentionally making my points about the 'Left'. You may be the most effective voice that 'the Right' has on these threads.
#21 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Tue 12 Oct 2010 at 05:08 PM
"You may be the most effective voice that 'the Right' has on these threads."
Well, that makes one of us I guess.
By the by, how was that a response to my argument? Are you saying you agree with:
"[T]here is NO ONE IDENTITY... that the definition of Americanism is the free hand america gives its individuals to define themselves. However, that free hand is only preserved when the state intervenes as citizens threaten it and citizens intervene as the state threatens it.
In order for a society to move beyond identity politics, identity needs to be seen as a characteristic of an individual, individual character being the defining trait. This is different from ignoring the differences or amplifying them as the sole defining attribute of a person.
It is the recognition of the individual above their identity, not the pretense that identity doesn't exist and isn't responsible for some of the societal problems we find today."
Because I'd be fine if you did.
#22 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 12 Oct 2010 at 06:35 PM
The challenge for liberals - acknowledged by many liberals, by the way - has been to enunciate exactly what they are positively for. 'Tolerance' is a kind of negative value in that it doesn't endorse any particular institution, set of values and beliefs. But a community, a polity, can't exist without widely shared values, which aren't handed down by lawyers. The old Soviet Union had a lot of 'laws', but it never created a common culture, and broke up into constituent states which weren't that different in 'laws' but were very different culturally.
You identify 'the state' only with 'the nation'. That's where the American left is weak. The French you admire have a commonplace in their political vocabulary - the distinction between 'the legal nation' and 'the real nation'. Evidently, from your defense of the French, you understand the distinction when it comes to other countries. You don't grasp that those Americans you really seem to loathe think that they have an identity, too, that goes beyond the laws and the state, just like Mexicans, the French, Israelis, the Chinese remain Mexican, French, Israeli, and Chinese in spite of (in the case of the latter) drastic changes in laws since Mao's time. The Germans, with their 'mongrel' ideology, never understood that Americans had a culture capable of unified action, and under-estimated the US prior to World War II as a result. They couldn't believe all those 'mongrels' would fight in a common cause.
Which do you think draws the majority of the immigrants in the world in any given year - the 'laws' (themselves just a product of the American cultural values to which I refer) or the wider culture of how people behave, interact, carry themselves on the street, dress, work, save money, treat their children, behave toward their spouses . . . ? They want freedom, as do us all, but they also want to belong to something bigger than that - there are many 'free' countries in the world. Apparently the distinctions are beyond the comprehension of the American Left, frozen in its political determinism, and thjs is one of its problems - even leftists have acknowledged their own difficulty in seizing and accepting symbols such as the flag as theirs, too. This would mean leftists would have to acknowledge Tea Partiers as fellow countrymen with whom they disagree - something that, as your incendiary posts illustrate, is beyond their capacity to do.
Wrongly (I think) they believe Moslem immigrants are not interested in joining this broad stream that makes American history fairly continuous in its politics, but that these immigrants want to constitute a separate and hostile culture within the country. I'm positive they are wrong in almost all instances, but there is enough in the example of western Europe for a fair-minded person to concede that the concern is legitimate. If Moslem-Americans become an ethnic component of the American Left, with its encouragement to yell 'racism' in an obvious effort to avoid engaging serious maters, they will become progressively marginal. African-Americans did that, and African-Americans remain poor relative to almost every other group. Moslem immigrants should be building bridges to those protesters, emphasizing what drew them to the country, including 'national identity' things like football and fast food. Nobody legislated football and fast food, by the way. We're at an end; I've tried to explain it as best I can.
BTW, why do you spend so much time arguing with me if I'm a 'nazi'? That one has liver spots on it, but then so do all attempts to demonstrate hatred and intolerance of opposing ideas. Which is the dictionary definition of bigotry. You're a little better than that.
#23 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Tue 12 Oct 2010 at 08:37 PM
"Which do you think draws the majority of the immigrants in the world in any given year - the 'laws' (themselves just a product of the American cultural values to which I refer) or the wider culture of how people behave, interact, carry themselves on the street, dress, work, save money, treat their children, behave toward their spouses . . . ?"
A) America migration rate is 25th:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2112rank.html
B) America is the biggest economy in the world next to a series of nations which have a between a half and a quarter of America's GDP per captia.
"This would mean leftists would have to acknowledge Tea Partiers as fellow countrymen with whom they disagree - something that, as your incendiary posts illustrate, is beyond their capacity to do."
There is no problem accepting them as countrymen, on the contrary they have a hard time accepting us. They are the ones moaning about taking their country back while using violent rhetoric, if not violence itself, to make their points.
"Wrongly (I think) they believe Moslem immigrants are not interested in joining this broad stream that makes American history fairly continuous in its politics, but that these immigrants want to constitute a separate and hostile culture within the country."
And ironically this is the mentality which leads them to mobilize and wall up in preparation for the cultural forces by which they feel beseiged, which then turns them into the "separate and hostile culture within the country". And yeah, the left has a problem with that since they tend demonize us, attempt to rewrite laws to infringe upon our freedoms in accordance with their views, and that's when they're not busy shooting at us. If your side is not willing to recognize individual rights and freedoms because they are afraid of cultural progression, then we're going to have a conflict.
"BTW, why do you spend so much time arguing with me if I'm a 'nazi'? "
That was a joke, in reference to your "Germans couldn't acknowledge that Jews were Germans since they were too focused on differences, just like the modern left."
When I say something like "screw off with the labeling btw you nazi" it's meant to be tongue in cheek.
And the reason why I spent my time arguing what you were saying is because you were wrong, in my humble opinion.
Cultural identity is not nothing, certainly not something to be phased out for the superior "American identity" as defined by anglo-american "football and fast food" tradition. People should be allowed to participate in the melting pot without sacrificing the flavors that make them distinct.
And cultural identity is not everything. An individual should not be measured by the characteristics they share within a section of American society. If we are to survive together, we have to define ourselves as greater than the colors of our skins and the countries of our parents' origins.
These issues require a little nuance.
Such as shown here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wQwq7Fvs2s
#24 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 12 Oct 2010 at 11:06 PM
No time, meeting old friend (gay, for those of you obsessive about these things) for drink - good answer - never said this wasn't a legitimate debate among sincere people on both sides, in fact, my point was the opposite - wasn't impressed by your CIA/immigration chart, especially after reading fine print - how about a list showing absolute numbers? They matter. If I emigrate to Antigua, I've had a big impact on that country's rate. But in a world of equal people, absolute numbers matter, and the US bears a huge share of the absolute number of immigrants every year - which was my throwaway point.
#25 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 13 Oct 2010 at 05:06 PM
If you want to understand why any critical discussion of Jewish people or Israel is met with such harsh resistance in the United States, watch the documentary called "Defamation" by Jewish-Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir. It's on NetFlix (right now available streaming). Another documentary (that's less general and more focused on foreign policy) is called "The Israel Lobby" by Dutch filmmaker Marije Meerman.
#26 Posted by ActaNonVerba, CJR on Sat 16 Oct 2010 at 03:42 PM