# Rick Sanchez takes on Jon Stewart... and immediately gets fired by CNN **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 1, 2010, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791 "2010-10-01T23:43:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/41 "2010-10-02T03:35:49Z")
> [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > > [@Bosstone](#): > > > > An honest person who has the facts behind him can kick the jester’s ass any day of the week. > > Complete bullshit. One of Alinsky’s _Rules for Radicals_: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.” Besides what **Lakai** said, that last bit ain’t necessarily so. For all the shit Stewart gives Fox News, they’ve weathered him surprisingly well due to the standing orders to simply ignore him. Fox would have self-destructed by now if they’d tried to respond to him. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/42 "2010-10-02T03:35:52Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > > [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > > > Complete bullshit. One of Alinsky’s _Rules for Radicals_: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.” > > Well, I guess I’ll just defer to someone I’ve never heard of, then. :dubious: _Rules for Radicals_ is a very influential book. But feel free to ignore it because you’re ignorant. BTW, Jews totally do control the media. I voted against firing Sanchez (he had himself tasered! Comedy gold!) but was apparently overruled. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/43 "2010-10-02T03:41:04Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > > [@Bosstone](#): > > > > Well, I guess I’ll just defer to someone I’ve never heard of, then. :dubious: > > _Rules for Radicals_ is a very influential book. But feel free to ignore it because you’re ignorant. That’s fine. It’s still stupid to call my assertion wrong and present only another assertion as evidence. ---
**Author:** ![lindsaybluth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/90db22/32.png) [@lindsaybluth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lindsaybluth)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/44 "2010-10-02T04:08:00Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > 1. Stewart constantly criticizes Obama. If you actually watch the show, you should know that. > 2. Stewart has never said being Jewish makes him a victim or tried to claim “minority” staus, so when you accuse him of “grasping at straws,” you’ll have to explain what the hell you’re talking about. He was not even part of the conversation about his own Jewishness that got Sanchez fired. That happened on a radio show that Stewart had nothing to do with. 1. He mocks Obama, but nowhere near as hard as he should. It’s the sort of mocking that’s done everywhere else. I expect more from him; I expect what he was doing 3-7 years ago. That was great stuff. I didn’t think he’d turn out to be such a partisan hack. He cared a few years back. Now he phones it in, which was the more salient point of my post. He doesn’t read the books his guests write, not even skimming them. He asks blowhard questions, and he doesn’t do justice to his conservative guests and even the quality of the correspondents have gone drastically down. 2. Of course he’s never said “Being Jewish is my trump card” :rolleyes:. I also never said he was a part of the interview directly. I’m talking about his show; he just jokes about being Jewish all the time passively; about being nerdy and unliked and different, how Jews are unathletic (a favorite of his). He played soccer at William and Mary for christsakes! He’s always throwing on supposed New Jersey Jewish accents and making fun of himself, when really he’s just drawing attention to the fact he’s _different_, and by being different and unique that somehow makes him _cool_. I’d bet the farm that his kids go to a school where they don’t have class over Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It’s a tired game he plays. > [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Stewart is an asshole. He is funny, and he goes for people I don’t like, but he’s an asshole. 🙂 This is spot on. It’s like the joke he made (years back now…) about [moveon.org](http://moveon.org). Something like “[Moveon.org](http://Moveon.org) is a bunch of people you agree with…but that you hate.” ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/45 "2010-10-02T04:15:40Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Stewart is an asshole. He is funny, and he goes for people I don’t like, but he’s an asshole. 🙂 Well, based on the clips posted to this thread, I’d say the first and the last ones are indeed fairly assholish, but something like five years separates them, and the rest all seem to be 30-second or less fragments used in the show-ending Moment of Zen. The latter are nothing more than the subject’s own words, without further comment. If Sanchez is that upset over being mentioned in passing once every few months on Stewart’s show, he really ought to grow a thicker skin. As for his claim that Stewart is ‘bigoted’, give me a fucking break. None of the clips even hint that Sanchez’ ethnicity might be an issue. Hey, I can imagine that having some of your editorial decisions mocked can be pretty painful, and I’m happy I work in a field where I’m unlikely to held up for ridcule on The Daily Show. Nevertheless, Sanchez flew completely off the rails here. I doubt I would have fired him, but that’s CNN’s perogative. ---
**Author:** ![Lakai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/46 "2010-10-02T04:17:39Z")
> [@lindsaybluth](#): > > 1. He mocks Obama, but nowhere near as hard as he should. It’s the sort of mocking that’s done everywhere else. I expect more from him; I expect what he was doing 3-7 years ago. That was great stuff. I didn’t think he’d turn out to be such a partisan hack. He cared a few years back. Now he phones it in, which was the more salient point of my post. He doesn’t read the books his guests write, not even skimming them. He asks blowhard questions, and he doesn’t do justice to his conservative guests and even the quality of the correspondents have gone drastically down. It’s hard to do better than Colbert and Carell, but everything else you’ve mentioned is simply a bare assertion. It’s kind of hard to have a discussion with you if you don’t provide any specific examples of what you’re talking about. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/47 "2010-10-02T05:03:36Z")
You know, just reading the comments doesn’t sound nearly as antisemitic as hearing them. None of the crap about Stewart even matters. It was just what started him on his tirade. It was not until the cohost pointed out that Jon being Jewish meant he was a minority (and thus not a part of the white elite that he hates), that Sanchez put his foot in his mouth. He just treated the idea that Jews run the media as a casual thing. And, no using such euphemisms as “those types of people” doesn’t work, especially when you’ve been talking about Jewish people just a few seconds ago. Heck, that phrase alone is enough to make me look carefully for racist comments. I just didn’t find them until I heard the tape. I don’t think he’d be fired for anything he said against Stewart, or anything else in the first 10 minutes. I’d tell you where the crap starts, but I just checked, and you can’t “scootch.” Just listen up to the 12 minute mark, and pay attention after the 10th. I don’t see how whether Stewart is an asshole is relevant–though I don’t think he really is. At least, there are a lot worse people here. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/48 "2010-10-02T05:28:03Z")
[Tevye]I realize of course it’s no shame to be poor, but I never felt it was any great honor either…[/Tevye] Apparently Sanchez thinks growing up poor was a career choice and real achievement and worth using to pander. Challenging somebody to a pissing test on “who’s more discriminated against” is never going to benefit your public image. And his thing on Stewart’s father being a professor and thus having everything… uh, first off, his father is a professor at a public college, it’s not like that’s a license to print money. Second, his father and mother divorced when he was 9 and he has such a bad relationship he dropped his father’s last name (Stewart, or Stuart, is his middle name)- he’s said in interviews before that he did this due to his lack of relationship, because being Jewish isn’t a terrible drawback to being a stand-up comic. Stewart attended William & Mary, an Ivy League school it’s true, on a soccer scholarship he earned. He earned a talk show after working his ass off for 20+ years in everything from unpaid open mike nights to bar mitzvahs to The Nanny guest roles. He’s really not a Kennedy or a Guggenheim who grew up pampered and never worked. And as if Stewart would flash the Jew Signal to his c’homeys at CNN to have Sanchez fired! Jews control the weather; one flash flood or freak tornado and Sanchez would be buried under 3 tons of debris without anybody ever thinking it was anything other than a sad but natural occurrence. How long before Sanchez has a job on Fox News do you suppose? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/49 "2010-10-02T05:29:07Z")
CNN wouldn’t fire anybody for criticizing Jon Stewart. He is anathema there. Jon Stewart destroyed Crossfire by pointing out that it’s hosts were pompous asses. He has ridiculed Sanchez and Blitzer, and every other self serious cable news personality. Sanchez made the mistake of using bigoted stereotypical statements about Jews. This would disqualify any newsertainment personality, except on Fox News. The subject of the statements doesn’t matter. > [@Lakai](#): > > > [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > > > Complete bullshit. One of Alinsky’s _Rules for Radicals_: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.” > > Not true. Comedy that doesn’t ring true just isn’t funny. Remember that Fox once tried to make a conservative comedy show. I think Fox has a 24 hour conservative comedy network. ---
**Author:** ![arseNal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@arseNal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/arseNal)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/50 "2010-10-02T05:45:32Z")
I don’t know how much it matters, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Rick Sanchez who was the “Are you listening” guy; that was Rick Santelli, a trader. ---
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/51 "2010-10-02T05:51:50Z")
Tiny nitpick Sam- William & Mary isn’t Ivy League, though it IS an elite school. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/52 "2010-10-02T05:56:03Z")
IMO, Stewart had very little to do with Sanchez, other than providing a conveniently timed excuse. Here’s an [NY Times story](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/business/media/02cnn.html), that contains the following: > [@](#): > > Mr. Stewart was far from the only person known to mock Mr. Sanchez, who was once tasered on camera for a segment. He was a polarizing figure within CNN, but under the channel’s former president, Jonathan Klein, he was rewarded with more air time, most recently a two-hour block in the afternoons. Mr. Klein was fired last week. Sanchez’s sponsor and protector got canned, and Sanchez may already have been doomed. He had already lost his anchor spot earlier in the week, before these comments. Perhaps the stress of that contributed to his reckless comments. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/53 "2010-10-02T06:32:30Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > > [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > > > Just because he’s Jewish doesn’t make him a saint. > > Actually, I think being Jewish is probably a pretty major barrier to him being a Saint. Tell that to the apostles, Mary and Joseph, John the Baptist, etc. I may be mistaken as I’m a protester and we don’t have saints, but Jewishness has never been a barrier to Sainthood as far as I know. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/54 "2010-10-02T06:33:34Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > [Tevye]I realize of course it’s no shame to be poor, but I never felt it was any great honor either…[/Tevye] > > Apparently Sanchez thinks growing up poor was a career choice and real achievement and worth using to pander. Challenging somebody to a pissing test on “who’s more discriminated against” is never going to benefit your public image. And his thing on Stewart’s father being a professor and thus having everything… uh, first off, his father is a professor at a public college, it’s not like that’s a license to print money. Second, his father and mother divorced when he was 9 and he has such a bad relationship he dropped his father’s last name (Stewart, or Stuart, is his middle name)- he’s said in interviews before that he did this due to his lack of relationship, because being Jewish isn’t a terrible drawback to being a stand-up comic. Stewart attended William & Mary, an Ivy League school it’s true, on a soccer scholarship he earned. He earned a talk show after working his ass off for 20+ years in everything from unpaid open mike nights to bar mitzvahs to The Nanny guest roles. He’s really not a Kennedy or a Guggenheim who grew up pampered and never worked. > > And as if Stewart would flash the Jew Signal to his c’homeys at CNN to have Sanchez fired! Jews control the weather; one flash flood or freak tornado and Sanchez would be buried under 3 tons of debris without anybody ever thinking it was anything other than a sad but natural occurrence. > > How long before Sanchez has a job on Fox News do you suppose? Good Og you need to start a blog or something. Your talent is wasted here. On edit: Really, you are the consistently the best writer I have read over the past few years. Molly Ivins was as good on her better days. ---
**Author:** ![Camus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ba8739/32.png) [@Camus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Camus)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/55 "2010-10-02T06:33:54Z")
> [@newcomer](#): > > Point is that he let Gregory’s point stay unchallenged or subject to his usual “wit” as Gregory’s “explanation” is utterly moronic BS. Absence of a challenge or satire, in his show, means agreement with what was said. Silence or failing to challenge a particular argument is not the same as acceptance or agreement. But even if it were, what would Stewart’s agreement with Gregory’s fallacious or not argument have anything to do with anything else that has been argued in this thread (i.e. Stewart is a bigot and/or prejudiced)? [QUOTE=lindsaybluth] 1. He mocks Obama, but nowhere near as hard as he should. It’s the sort of mocking that’s done everywhere else. I expect more from him; I expect what he was doing 3-7 years ago. That was great stuff. I didn’t think he’d turn out to be such a partisan hack. [/QUOTE] Given how frequently he criticizes the Democrats (regularly calling them pussies and ridiculing their ineffectiveness and lack of cohesiveness) as well as Obama, how on Earth could you describe Stewart as a partisan hack? It isn’t really possible to mock Obama in the same way that Bush was mocked, since Bush’s infamous occasional verbal gaffes or odd turns of phrase are gone. Obama has certainly had some verbal gaffes (to say nothing of Biden), but his overall demeanor and tone are much more stoic/intellectual than Bush. That alone makes it much harder to do a funny and recognizable impression of Obama in the same way that Stewart did a somewhat funny (and only barely recognizable) impression of Bush. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/56 "2010-10-02T06:35:13Z")
The New York Times [article](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/business/media/02cnn.html) on Sanchez’s firing says, “He was a polarizing figure within CNN, but under the channel’s former president, Jonathan Klein, he was rewarded with more air time, most recently a two-hour block in the afternoons. Mr. Klein was fired last week.” So perhaps his firing was as much a result of the loss of his patron as his comments about Jon Stewart? ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/57 "2010-10-02T06:43:35Z")
Seems as reasonable as anything else. [tinfoilhat] He might have know he was going out and thought that slagging on Stewart would increase his chances at a Fox job. [/tinfoilhat] ---
**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/58 "2010-10-02T07:00:09Z")
He ain’t getting a job at Fox. If you listen got the interview, he says pretty horrible things about them. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/59 "2010-10-02T07:04:18Z")
> [@newcomer](#): > > > [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > > > Can you provide a cite that this is necessarily the case? > > Hamas is less “popular” than Fatah. No? That depends on who you sample. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791/60 "2010-10-02T07:07:06Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > The New York Times [article](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/business/media/02cnn.html) on Sanchez’s firing says, “He was a polarizing figure within CNN, but under the channel’s former president, Jonathan Klein, he was rewarded with more air time, most recently a two-hour block in the afternoons. Mr. Klein was fired last week.” So perhaps his firing was as much a result of the loss of his patron as his comments about Jon Stewart? Only a few posts late. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-sanchez-takes-on-jon-stewart-and-immediately-gets-fired-by-cnn/555791.md?page=4)