CNN fires Rick Sanchez

The Huffington Post:

Rick Sanchez has been fired from CNN following his controversial comments on a radio show Thursday.

"Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well,' a CNN statement said.

Sanchez did not appear on the air Friday.

Appearing on "Stand Up with Pete Dominick" Thursday, Sanchez called Jon Stewart a "bigot" and said that CNN and the other networks are all run by Jewish people.

Discussing Stewart with radio host Pete Dominick, Sanchez said that the "Daily Show" host has a limited worldview, and called him a "bigot."

The conversation began with Sanchez decrying "elite, Northeast establishment liberals" who "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.

"I think to some extent Jon Stewart and [Stephen] Colbert are the same way. I think Jon Stewart's a bigot," he 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."

When asked who Stewart is bigoted against, Sanchez said "everybody else who's not like him."

Sanchez would eventually retract the "bigot" claim, settling instead on calling Stewart "prejudicial" and "uninformed."

But he made a larger point when Dominick suggested that Stewart could understand being part of an oppressed minority group because he is Jewish.

Sanchez scoffed at the claim, snickering and suggesting that CNN and the rest of the media is run by Jewish people (from the "Stand Up with Pete Dominick" blog):

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]

Listen to Sanchez call Stewart a "bigot":



Listen to Sanchez talk about Stewart, Jews and the media: