CNN’s Rick Sanchez: Jon Stewart is a ‘Bigot’ and CNN is ‘Run’ by Jews

CNN’s resident idiot anchor, Rick Sanchez, is under fire today for comments he made on the SiriusXM talk show Stand Up! with Pete Dominick, where he called Daily Show host Jon Stewart a “bigot” and repeatedly referred to CNN as being “run” by Jews.

Dominick was broadcasting from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta where he’s preparing for the debut of his weekend show on the cable news network.

When Pete asked Sanchez about media balance and objectivity, the host of CNN’s “Rick’s List” (big waste of time), the anchor began railing on Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann [see related story: Olbermann Fires Back] for not dealing in real journalism. Unlike Sanchez who spends several hours a day confusing facts, reading tweets and enjoying the sound of his own voice.

According to Dominick’s blog, that’s when things got really interesting:

First, Sanchez started out expressing an anecdote from his own experience, when someone who was “top brass” at CNN told Sanchez to his face that he saw Sanchez as “more as John Quiñones,” referring to the Hispanic ABC News reporter. Sanchez’s example was an illustration that the problem of racism in the media business goes further than many expect, enveloping “not just the Right,” but also “elite, Northeast establishment liberals” that “deep down, when they look at a guy like me, they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier, and not the top tier.”

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.“

“How is he a bigot?” Pete asked.

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.

Pete pressed, “What group is he bigoted towards?”

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

Pete asked for a specific example, saying the term “bigot” is pretty strong.

“That’s what happens when you watch yourself  on his show every day, and all they ever do is call you stupid.”

Asked again what group Stewart is bigoted against, Sanchez replied, referring to Stewart in the second person:

Anybody who’s different than you are, anybody who’s not form your frame of reference; anybody who doesn’t look and sound exactly like the people that you sound [like] and grew up with. The people that you put on your show, who always reflect somebody who’s, “I’m bringing in to sit around me,” you know, who’s very different from me. I’m sorry, but I just don’t buy this thing that the only people out there who are prejudiced… are the Right. There’s people that are prejudiced on both sides.

Sanchez went on to claim that Stewart’s worldview is “very much a white, liberal establishment point of view.” Sanchez added:

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.

If I did just sit there and read the teleprompter every day, Jon Stewart would never say a word about me. He’d say I’m a good Hispanic anchor, “Way to go, you’ve done a good job, stay right there.” … I am a complex human being, I’m not some moron to be…”

Dominick points out that Sanchez admits most of his problem with Stewart is that he regularly takes shots at the CNN anchor:

Here’s what they do. This is the game they play. “I just picked on Fox News, because they just had a bold-faced [sic] lie about something — damnit, that means I gotta find something on CNN. Oh, I know… wait, hold on, let me find, oh that Rick Sanchez, that little Puerto Rican guy. I’ll make fun of him. Do you have anything.” “Uh, yeah, last week, he mispronounced the word indutably or whatever.” “Yeah, that’s it, find me that and we’ll do a whole 4-minute segment on how he mispronounced the word arithmetic.”

When Pete defended Jon Stewart as “just a comedian,” Sanchez shot back, “That’s a cop-out.”

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.

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 also suggested Jews in general, at least of his generation or younger, are not discriminated against, though they might hear the occasional Jew joke now and again.

I grew up not speaking English, dealing with real prejudice every day as a kid; watching my dad work in a factory, wash dishes, drive a truck, get spit on. I’ve been told that I can’t do certain things in life simply because I was a Hispanic. My friends who are black, I’ve seen that with them; I’ve seen that with a lot of minorities. I can’t really think — although I understand the plight of Jews, and all the experiences, and the things that have happened historically for them — but I can’t say that my buddy Glen or my buddy Izzy who I grew up with in South Florida ever were prejudiced against directly simply because they were Jewish. There may have been jokes around them or about other things, but it’s kinda — you know what I’m saying, it’s kind of a different thing.

“No, I don’t,” Pete replied.

“I can’t see somebody not getting a job somewhere because they’re Jewish,” Sanchez added.

“Well, then you’ve never been to Nebraska,” Pete shot back to lighten the mood.

Returning once again to his criticism of the Daily Show host, near the end of the exchange, Sanchez concluded about Stewart: “I don’t respect the guy.”

Wow! I think Sanchez may have dug his own grave on this one. I wouldn’t be surprise if CNN executives make a sudden change in the midday lineup, considering that Sanchez isn’t that popular or effective to begin with.

What a putz!