While some may argue that drunkenly hitting and (ultimately) killing a pedestrian with a car would be an automatic disqualification from attaining your own cable news show, Rick Sanchez beat the odds and spent six years as one of CNN’s most recognizable faces. Karma caught up to Sanchez last Friday, however, when CNN fired the anchor for calling Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart a bigot and implying that the Jews control the media on a SiriusXM radio show.
A walk down memory lane, however, reveals that this was not Sanchez’s first flirtation with charging others with racism and alleging conspiracy. Indeed, according to the currently unemployed Sanchez, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry and Glenn Beck are all bigots. But it was only when Sanchez alleged Stewart was a bigot and implied a Jewish media conspiracy holding his career back did CNN find the actions heinous enough to remove him from his 3-5 pm EST time slot.
1) On October 1, 2010, Sanchez told TVNewser that while he spoke three languages, Glenn Beck only spoke one and was a bigot. “I speak three languages, two of them fluent, as far as I can tell, Glenn Beck speaks one language and it is an interesting combination of English with an emphasis on bigotry,” he said.
2) On March 2, 2010, in a discussion about the Texas gubernatorial primary, Sanchez asserted that the term “states rights” was racist, seemingly suggesting that incumbent governor Rick Perry was a racist for using the phrase.
3) On October 12, 2009, Sanchez read a disputed quote and attributed it to Rush Limbaugh, claiming that “Limbaugh’s perceived racist diatribes are too many to name.” Sanchez later apologized for airing the fallacious quote on his Twitter page. “i’ve know rush. in person,i like him. his rhetoric,however is inexcusably divisive. he’s right tho. we didn’t confirm quote. our bad”
4) In July 2009, Sanchez “tweeted” that Hispanics who worked for Fox News were sellouts. “[I]f i didn’t believe in doing right thing, i’d be rich anchoring at fox news” and “do u know how much money i’d make if i’d sold out as hispanic and worked at fox news, r u kidding, one problem, looking in mirror”. Fox News responded with vengeance, telling Mediate “Everyone knows that Rick is an industry joke, he shows that he’s a hack everyday. And he doesn’t have to worry about working at FOX because we only hire talent who have the ability to generate ratings.”
