by Molly Ivors 
I've been paying desultory attention to the Jon Stewart/Rick Sanchez brouhaha, not so much because I love Stewart (I do), but because Rick Sanchez has been annoying me for at least twenty years.
He was always the most bombastic anchor on Miami news, which was already a pretty bombastic field. He took "if it bleeds, it leads" to its furthest reaches, eagerly tearing into stories about car crashes and riots and, on one memorable occasion, obsessively replaying a story about a shooting at a funeral captured on live TV. When he wept in the ruins of Hurricane Andrew, his character of "Rick Sanchez, Sensitive Cuban Guy" went into overdrive for me, and I don't think I ever really took him seriously after that.
And so yes, I admit that my own wounds have been assuaged by Stewart's occasionally poking fun at Sanchez as he ascended into the starry heavens of cable news and I had to look at him again, though admittedly, not as often as I used to.
But no one could have predicted© that Sanchez would go all Father Coughlin on Stewart's ass, as he did last week, classing Stewart with "my bosses at CNN" as one of those wacky Jews-Who-Run-the-Media.
Stewart took it pretty well, poking gentle fun at Sanchez at an autism benefit over the weekend, merely noting that the act of suggesting Jews run the media is maybe something you might want to pay off, indulgence-style, by donating to the charity for whom he was raising money at the moment. (Wall Street traders and people who dented their friends' cars without tellling them were also suggested to pony up to offset their guilty consciences.)
But it was blown up into A WAR. Sanchez got fired from CNN, not because of Jon Stewart, but because he called his bosses Jewish racists. Just so we're clear.
Stewart responded last night on TDS:
The Rick-Sanchez-as-Michael-Scott bit is inspired.
Still, Stewart ended on a pretty classy note, suggesting that Sanchez may not have meant everything he said, that though he's something of a buffoon, he's hardly a Beck/Limbaugh style ideologue, that Sanchez has called out white supremacists for making the same argument he did, and generally trying to ratchet the whole thing back."I think he probably has a good heart."
Sanchez's wife, Suzanne, posted on her Facebook page today that the two men had spoken pleasantly and there was no bad blood. Everyone was being a grown-up, in other words.
But on the Washington Post site, some truly astounding commenterscame forward: many, maybe most, of whom were openly anti-Semitic. Here's my favorite:
Jon Stewart is a (as Colbert is), highly efficient book peddler (provided that the book is written by a Jewish of course).
Stewart has been made an icon of Zionism (he pulls by the nose a lot of uneducated semi-adults), and he is untouchable (every media outlet is instructed to hype every fart Jon outs).
And of course Stewart is a bigot; have you ever weighted statistically how many blacks or Latinos are invited at his show? Negligible.
Whenever Stewart address of refers to minorities, he is condescending. Minority guests of Stewart always suffer some indignity, compared to Jewish guests or blond guests. I, personally, if would be a minority, would never go to his show, unless I’d enjoy being humiliated.
You see his excitement, kicking the fallen Sanchez. What can you expect from him? Nothing of value.
That is why, I stopped watching him, long, long ago.
Stewart is a pony show directed by earpiece, with the Zionist dagger under his cloak, insidiously painting excrement in everyone they want to. Just because they can. But don’t you dare to criticize a Jewish, in America—they own your rear, America—and there is nothing you can do about it.
Posted by: SouthStar | October 5, 2010 9:25 AM | Report abuse
Oh, how I wish I were making that up. You see, the fact that Sanchez was fired for calling his bosses Zionist bigots in fact proves that they're Zionist bigots! Q.E. F'ing D, baby!
I don't know if CNN should have fired Sanchez, but I would hate to see him become a wingnut cause celebre, as though having a cable news show is the First Amendment right of every American citizen. And he'd be an uncomfortable member of their ranks in any case, what with being an immigrant and whatnot. I hear he even speaks Spanish!
Both Stewart and Sanchez seem to be on an even keel as of this writing, though of course that could change. I hope Sanchez finds another job, maybe on a show where I won't happen across him accidentally, something like a neo-Star Search. But the last time I checked, it wasn't against the law to annoy me, and it's also not against the law to satirize public figures. So there.
