Should’ve Picked on Muslims or Acorn
By John Cole October 2nd, 2010
So Rick Sanchez was fired from CNN, and Steve Benen highlights the following:
Postscript: Just as an aside, Josh Marshall raised a good point last night: “Rick Sanchez’s mistake was not being a Tea Party candidate. Then there wouldn’t be any problem.” That sounds about right.
No, his mistake was not sticking to shitting on Muslims or black people. You fuck with Christians and Jews and you get fired. You fuck with Muslims and blacks, you’re given an honorarium at Harvard.
And if you think I’m wrong that picking on Muslims is the route to follow, I’ll remind you all that CNN just shitcanned Octavia Nasr, a reporter with 20 years experience, for PRAISING a Muslim.
Posted in Our Failed Media Experiment
When will this collective insanity subside? Just a little?
October 2nd, 2010 at 1:25 pm
I knew he wasn’t smart, but who did he think he was? Lou Dobbs?
Can you imagine being Sanchez and waking up this morning?
“I said WHAT??”
October 2nd, 2010 at 1:27 pm
If I were a reporter, I do not believe that I would tweet. On the other hand, as a non-reporter, I do not tweet.
October 2nd, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Also, I have to ask. That ad for Muslima.com? If I click it does it buy me a one way ride on a black helicopter?
Because those models are smokin hot. The ones without the face covering I mean.
October 2nd, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Don’t forget Arabs and Persians. Among others, but I think those are the most prominent ethnic group against whom you can joke about as inferior or barbaric or recommend laying waste to entire nations, forcible transfer, ethnocide, or genocide.
October 2nd, 2010 at 1:31 pm
@Omnes Omnibus:
Wow OO, only one post.
(and I’m finding the singlemuslim.com and muslim matrimonials site ads a little creepy at the moment)
As others have noted, Stewart has another notch on his handle for another CNN personality taken down.
October 2nd, 2010 at 1:34 pm
@arguingwithsignposts: With no malice meant, you can go right ahead and bite me.
October 2nd, 2010 at 1:37 pm
@arguingwithsignposts:
I don’t get it. Did Stewart cause this Sanchez thing? How is it a notch in his handle?
October 2nd, 2010 at 1:40 pm
@James E. Powell: Poked at him until his head exploded?
October 2nd, 2010 at 1:44 pm
@John Cole:
I disagree with this. It conflates anti-semitism with right-wing political support of the right-wing Israeli government policies.
For the record, I agree that the firing of Octavia Nasr was cowardly, outrageous, and totally wrong based on Breitbartian reasoning.
October 2nd, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Sanchez was promoting his book. It’s more than a little weird that so many dumb shits are trying to enhance their careers by (supposedly) writing books—but we live in times when irony just comes down in buckets.
October 2nd, 2010 at 1:49 pm
@James E. Powell:
See Omnes’ reply right below yours.
Omnes: Mwuah! :)
October 2nd, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Speaking of which, I am damned glad we didn’t kill any “civilians” in our latest drone strike:
15 terrorists killed in U.S. drone attacks on Pak soil
October 2nd, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Really OT, but Holy Shit!
Some 3,000 Millionaires Claim Jobless Benefits, IRS Data Show
And the point to the article really is this:
Which is 100% true and should be the focal point behind all the political wrangling about extending UI. It’s an “insured loss” not welfare.
Assholes.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:07 pm
@Omnes Omnibus: Honestly, I’ve been ignoring your first post and skimming down to the second one for so long it took me a while to figure out what AWS was talking about.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Don’t forget Arabs and Persians. Among others, but I think those are the most prominent ethnic group against whom you can joke about as inferior or barbaric
Hispanic immigrants, also.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:09 pm
@Corner Stone: You may also bite me.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:19 pm
@Jess Sayn: Yeah, I was thinking about that just after posting. But I think there’s at least a bit of pushback one risks, given the high percentage of Latinos in both the population and in the media itself.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:20 pm
I think this affair also shows that CNN has become a craven ass covering mess of corporate cowardice. Sanchez made an ass of himself, but was it a firing offense? (to be honest, IMHO, it was far worse than what Nasr did).
I guess my qualms about the firing, big picture wise, is that doofus that he is, Sanchez sometimes did some good work, and I think he is better than some others. So you need to balance the good versus the bad, and give a person a chance to respond, or make amends.
But CNN just pisses its pants and fires you.
I was thinking last night about what I would say to Sanchez in order to make him understand why what he said was so offensive. I figure the best way would be to just turn the tables on him. As in:
“Oh, so I see you are a Cuban from Miami. Boy, rich Cuban gangsters sure run everything down there. Must be nice to have a network of rich powerful buddies to look out for your kind of people, huh? Man you must of had it easy, you weren’t discriminated against like a downtrodden middle class white male like me.”
(Edit: discerning readers will note that I have cleverly taken the perspective of a Tea Person for this example.)
You can play the same game with every group. So we have the African Americans who supposedly grow lazy and rich off the African American controlled federal welfare state bureaucracy. And the old lie about Jews. And far out in crazy land, the secret grip of radical political Islam on our nation’s leadership, paving the way for Sharia law in the US. Boy, that evil Muslin minority will have it made, when they can use their medieval laws to rule the rest of us with an iron fist, and the Muslin Obama chucking about it from the White House.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Looking at the transcript, I don’t see anything Sanchez said that isn’t true. Except for the ‘bigot’ part, which he took back. Look, it makes sense that people (including Stewart, who I love) have unconscious biases and don’t understand other cultures as well as the ones they are closest to. Hopefully, we all try to keep open minds and to learn more about other cultures and be respectful. But Sanchez was speaking a truth about Jews in the media (same with Jews in politics). Similarly, a Cuban-American in Florida has an especially supportive environment. Hell, it doesn’t make him a Nazi just to recognize that being a Jew and working in media or politics, there is a lot of extra support that they will get.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:22 pm
If Sanchez would’ve been in any way a ratings winner, he wouldn’t have gotten canned.
But fear not for the truth-telling newsman. There is a Bernard Goldberg-like future awaiting him if only he chooses to accept it. Once the rightwing elders make sure that his rant was merely anti-Semitic and not in any way anti-Israel.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:23 pm
I honestly thought RS was smarter than this, though some of the HIspanic victimhood he practiced wore. Not that there isn’t a lot of bullshit prejudice, but that all objections to illegal immigratioin aren’t simply prejudice.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:23 pm
If CNN is so concerned about stereotyping, it makes you wonder how Lou Dobbs lasted so long, considering some of the outright falsehoods he engaged in.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Look, if your boss who fostered your career is a Jew (which he was) you either have to have a story in your head about how he was a Jew but not too Jewy or you need to have your head examined for attacking the entire cabal. Basically, Sanchez lost his “rabbi” when his boss was fired. Like every other mid-level talking head he needed to please everyone else at that point, in the hopes of being adopted by another macher. If he’d been surrounded by Cubans, or Blacks, or the Chinese he might have wanted to think twice about slagging off on the whole lot of ‘em out of pique that a single member, Jon Stewart say, doesn’t worship the ground he walks on.
He got fired because, as someone said elsewhere mistaking the American upper class for a “representative” body Jews are “overrepresented” in the media. But even that is a bizarre misreading of what happened. Jews have been putting up with anti semitism, and hell even championing it, since they first started in the media and had to produce “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” Sanchez got canned because he wasn’t working out: he’s not that good, he’s not that bright, he doesn’t seem to know which fork to use, and he’s not bringing in the eyeballs or the money like he could be. If they’d hired him as a niche market purchase for ugly, stupid, racist people (like, say, Eric Ericson) he’d still be there even after, or especially, after more or less reprising the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a scheme to horde executive men’s room keys.
aimai
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Personally, I think the moral of the story is not to talk crap about your bosses.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:30 pm
@aimai:
Sorry, that should be “hoard” not “horde.” I seem to be having trouble with that one lately. Its not that I can’t tell the difference, its just that sometimes I’m thinking mongols when I should be thinking dragons.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:33 pm
OT but worth the detour:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10.....gn.html?hp
Some people are beginning to see that the election is not as cut and dried as it has been portrayed.
From the article:
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:33 pm
@Lori
I am highly skeptical of your argument. Jewish Americans may be disproportionately represented compared to their percentage of the population in both politics and the media, but in neither are you helped for being Jewish. Note how many Presidents have been Jewish, how many nightly news anchorpersons. You might not be screwed over for being Jewish anymore, and there have been Jewish network heads, but the insinuation that Sanchez was making doesn’t even make sense. Hell, the owner of CNN is Ted Turner for Chrissakes.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:39 pm
OT can someone explain to me why none of the progressive sites (TPM, ThinkProgress, etc) is covering the HUGE rally in the capital today when they were breathlessly covering the Beck thing and the tea party thing?
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:40 pm
@wengler:
Yeah, I agree.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:48 pm
@wengler: Ted was the founder, and is no longer owner. Hasn’t been the owner for a long time. I wish he was. I also wish he was still racing.
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:51 pm
@wengler:
I think there’s no question that being Jewish is a disadvantage when it comes to being an anchorperson. The only Jewish anchorperson I can think of is Wolf Blitzer and I don’t think he’d have that job if his name was Saul Finkelstein.
If Sanchez was trying to get a job at the editorial board of the Washington Post (all the members are Jewish except Colbert King and Eugene Robinson, to my knowledge, unless they’re gentiles who happen to talk about talk about Israel constantly, which is possible), it would be different. But he’s not. He’s a tv achorperson .
October 2nd, 2010 at 2:54 pm
@valdivia:
Do you mean this? Thanks.
Labor, civil rights groups rally in Washington
Sat Oct 2, 4:00 AM
By Philip Elliott, The Associated Press
More than 400 organizations, ranging from labour unions to faith, environmental and gay rights groups, expected tens of thousands of activists to participate in Saturday’s “One Nation Working Together” rally.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/cap.....on_march_1
wengler: I don’t know how much involvement Turner still has in CNN, but the company is now a division of Time Warner. Wikipedia says that CNN is run by a guy named Kent. Whatever Turner’s current involvement, I don’t think he has much say in the operations.
October 2nd, 2010 at 3:00 pm
@wengler:
I dont think Sanchez was way off in reality regarding media ownership. Those are just facts. But his facts got totally mingled with his personal issues regarding Jews/Stewart/racism.
Also, Turner is long gone; its been many many years since his departure.
October 2nd, 2010 at 3:04 pm
waitaminnit, even shitting on christians is allowed..the ones we are not allowed to shit on are the born again brand of christianity
October 2nd, 2010 at 3:09 pm
@jl:
Ironically, that story is from AP Canada.
(Wait, did I just use “ironically” correctly? If not, I blame Alanis.)
October 2nd, 2010 at 3:13 pm
@Mnemosyne:
yep. Canada! the NYT which gave front page coverage to the Beck rally pretty much all day ling has barely a mention of this one.
@jl:
as far as I know AP is not really a progressive site… :)
October 2nd, 2010 at 3:15 pm
@valdivia:
I think so. I noticed that ‘labor’ was spelled ‘labour’. But don’t have time to check, since I am supposed to be on my way to An Important Saturday Social Function ten minutes ago, rather than sitting here making comments.
I will read about it later, and be interested in what coverage it gets in the US press.
October 2nd, 2010 at 3:17 pm
@valdivia:
we do not bring teh sessy hoverrounds & lunacy.
You’d think progressive media would give progressive actions some love but hoocodanode!
October 2nd, 2010 at 3:20 pm
I’m not sure Sanchez’s remarks are worse than those of Marty Peretz, yet Sanchez gets fired and Peretz is honored by Harvard.
October 2nd, 2010 at 3:26 pm
According to pictures, there are a lot of people there but I don’t know how to estimate how many. The Mall is a surprisingly large place.
I think it was about full for the inauguration and there were estimates of about 1.5 million people.
Big place.
October 2nd, 2010 at 3:26 pm
@ruemara:
yeah yelling that we don’t do these things enough and when they happen?.......crickets.
@Linda Featheringill:
I was out and about around noon today coming back from, a, um, night out (only reason I did not go to the thing sincerely) and the streets were packed with people with signs etc. So I am curious to know if the media will actually cover this or not, cause they covered Beck as if he took over DC and today it seemed like it was the same number of people but zero coverage. Pisses me off.
October 2nd, 2010 at 3:31 pm
@valdivia:
This is why I think the John Stewart rally is a great idea, and WILL get lots of coverage—because it puts a famous face, two actually, behind the message.
In these ridiculous times, if you’re gonna fight celebrity-obsessed idiocy, you gotta do it with the obsessive power of an equal and opposite celebrity.
October 2nd, 2010 at 3:43 pm
@eemom:
I would like to think Colbert is a celebrity equal to Beck. He usually orders his minions to do things that make it harder to count them.
October 2nd, 2010 at 4:08 pm
I don’t understand the whole foofaraugh. It seems clear enough that Sanchez’s “And to imply that somehow they—the people in this country who are Jewish—are an oppressed minority?” meant “And you’re telling me that Stewart can connect with people of color because, as a Jewish American, he’s in an oppressed minority?” I think he’s wrong about Stewart and the “elites,” but he’s not doing the “the media does what it does ‘cause it’s run by Teh Joos!” thing that one sees, for example, in Balloon Juice comments now and then.
October 2nd, 2010 at 4:14 pm
I worked at Time Warner when AOL bought them. Ted was essentially pushed out; wasn’t even told about the deal before it happened, and it was the same time Jane Fonda was moving out.
He hasn’t had anything to do with the company in years, focuses on his land holdings and bison restaurants (best onion rings ever, btw).
October 2nd, 2010 at 4:19 pm
fwiw, a month or so ago Oliver Stone actually DID overtly say in an interview that Jews control the media (he later recanted) and it got almost no press coverage at the time. Whuzzup with that?
October 2nd, 2010 at 4:19 pm
From the transcript:
PD: You’ve said enough. You’re digging a hole.
RS: Wait, I’m not done!
PD: Rick Sanchez calls Jon Stewart a bigot is going viral.
RS: Ok. Its not bigot it’s prejudicial. Prejudicial
Sheesh.
October 2nd, 2010 at 4:51 pm
@eemom:
He generally makes profitable movies. That’s what’s up with that.
October 2nd, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Thank you for saying this. It’s what I’ve been thinking to myself since yesterday and didn’t see anyone saying it.
October 2nd, 2010 at 5:05 pm
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
Ted Koppel comes to mind.
October 2nd, 2010 at 5:08 pm
@eemom:
Zionists/Israel != “the Jews”, for Chrissake.
October 2nd, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Sanchez unwittingly illustrated that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.
If he just would have confined his ire to blacks, arabs, muslims, or mexicans he would have been just fine.
October 2nd, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Did y’all notice that Marty Peretz just used the word, “pussy” in relation to Obama?
Peretz hates women just as much as he hates Muslims, blacks, and Latinos.
October 2nd, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Dear Rick,
Next time just stick to felating The Greatest Generation.
Best,
T. Brokaw
October 2nd, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Stupid people face a unique challenge: they’re largely unaware that they’re stupid. Sanchez is the poster boy for stupid, which is why he’s red meat (hell, an entire butcher shop) for the likes of Stewart & Colbert.
Whatever. I can easily turn Sanchez off. (assuming I ever tuned in to CNN in the first place.)
But I do become a mite annoyed when stupid people victimize themselves because they apparently feel ‘picked on’ by those who call them out on their chronic stupidity.
I listened to that entire Sanchez/Pete Domincik interview. Sanchez’s whining was entirely about Stewart, and the only reason Jews even entered the convo is because Stewart’s Jewish. Sanchez’s notorious stupidity kicked in and, well, the rest is history.
October 2nd, 2010 at 6:41 pm
@Jay, the word has been changed to “wuss” now.
October 2nd, 2010 at 8:03 pm
@KCinDC: It’s clear, however, from the comments section that it was previously “pussy.” Quite ironic for a man who married into his bully pulpit money.
October 2nd, 2010 at 9:06 pm
This holiday was a very powerful warning against that gossip rag otherwise known as memeorandum. As they developed on the Internet, I missed the Carl Paladino thing and I missed the Rick Sanchez thing. I decided that the NY Post must be absolutely gleeful because they have created a humdinger of a tabloid story.
Dovetailing with John, I told my husband that if Sanchez had only said, “There are many more Jews in the media than Cuban-Americans,” he couldn’t have gotten in trouble. Next to what Oliver Stone said this is worth um, one or two perutahs.
October 3rd, 2010 at 5:42 am
With all due respect to ellaesther maybe having explained this already,
Shemini Atzeret/Simchas Torah
The standard translation of “atzeret” is an “assembly”. Both Rashi and Ramban agree that “atzeret” should be taken from “atzar”, to “hold back”. Rashi gives the example of a king who had a lavish feast for his son and asked his son to stay just one more day with him. After the lavish sacrifices of Succos, on Shemini Atzeret you sacrifice one bull (when there was a Temple) and have the prayer for rain. Also there is the symbolism of the number eight involved because Shemini Atzeret is an eighth day tacked onto Succos. If you forgot to bring one of the Succos sacrifices you can still bring it on Shemini Atzeret.
Simchas Torah is the completion of the Torah reading cycle for the year and starting all over again with Genesis 1. In Israel this would be on Shemini Atzeret as well.
October 3rd, 2010 at 5:53 am