Rick Sanchez Makes a Racist Rant, Gets Fired

Rick Sanchez Makes a Racist Rant, Gets Fired

Entertainment Commentary

By our guest blogger, Emma Gray

Word to the wise--as this week has shown, don’t mess with Jon Stewart. Or maybe refrain from making racist rants when you’re being interviewed on a radio show. Unfortunately for CNN anchor, Rick Sanchez, he did both.

Sanchez was a guest on the SiriusXM radio show, Stand Up! with Pete Dominick, on October 1st. He discussed his views on racism in the media. This somehow devolved into an angry rant about Jon Stewart, who often pokes fun at Sanchez on "The Daily Show."

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cuban-American Sanchez insisted that racism comes “not just [from] the right,” but from “elite, Northeast establishment liberals.” He cited Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as examples of this liberal media racism, going so far as to call Stewart a bigot.

Dominick then asked Sanchez who the comedy-pundit was bigoted against. “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 anchor’s anger reached a peak when Dominick tried to point out that like Sanchez, Jon Stewart is also a member of a minority ethnic group in the United States.

Sanchez reacted strongly, laughing and saying, “He's such a minority, I mean, you know… 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."

Way to go, Sanchez. No one has EVER suggested that Jews control the media, right? Isn’t that a pretty classic anti-Semitic argument? I guess the powers that be at CNN thought so, because later that day, Rick Sanchez was an employee no more.

The truth is, racism exists in all ethnic and socioeconomic groups, and I’m sure Sanchez has experienced his fair share of bigotry. But combating racism with more racism is not such an effective strategy. In fact, it may get you fired.