Off the Air” Rick Sanchez fired by CNN

Rick Sanchez, host of  Rick’s List on CNN, got immediately fired one day after veering into “the Jews run the media,” territory while complaining about jokes at his expense by comedian Jon Stewart.

On a Sirius radio show, Sanchez , who called Stewart “a bigot”  also claimed that the media is run by an elite Northeast Jewish elite who look down on people like him:

” 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.”

Sanchez had become an affable, but sometimes prickly, CNN personality with his signature show that was rising in popularity, and doing well enough to temporarily replace Campbell Brown when she went down in flames.

Sanchez, a Cuban American,  played a particularly important counter-balance to the nightly racist anti-Mexican diatribe of Lou Dobbs, whom CNN allowed to broadcast vitriol and unsubstantiated stories for years before finally getting fired earlier this year.

While Sanchez remarks revealed him to be thin-skinned and shallow-thinking,  he was not allowed to apologize on-air his remarks. At this point, Sanchez has not issued a public statement in regard to his firing. CNN’s one-sentence “We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well,”  reveals CNN executives to be rather thin-skinned as well.

Sanchez, who came through the ranks from a local TV reporter to a network staffer to a host of national cable news show, apparently never overcame the insecurity he appears to have felt as minority journalist in a white male dominated industry.

As with many high-profile people in the media and elsewhere, Sanchez was routinely skewered by Stewart for his various on-air gaffes. His demonstration of being tasered during a CNN segment was a staple of Stewart’s show, and he also became famous for wondering how there could be “volcanos in Iceland.”  Sanchez once called President Barack Obama a “cotton-picking president.,” and accused any Hispanic reporter working for Fox News as “a sell-out.”

Sanchez did not seem to realize that he was fair game to be poked fun at by Stewart because of his national profile, just like Glen Beck or Bill O’Reilly or other talking heads.  It will be interesting to hear what Sanchez and others close to the situation have to say, if anything, in the weeks to come. It seems that though Sanchez had finally arrived, he didn’t seem to realize it.