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I know we’re way past the Rick Sanchez/Jon Stewart debacle by now, but since there has been a lot of mocking of the axed CNN anchor in the past few days, it’s only fair to also hear from him. Sanchez today broke his silence with a public apology. It came a week after his radio rant that got him in hot water and was in writing, proving that it’s much smarter to write things down and sleep on them. Also today, Sanchez’s former uber-boss, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, told Fox News that rehiring Sanchez at CNN one day was a possibility. Yeah, right. Here is Sanchez’s statement:
On October 4th, I had a very good conversation with Jon Stewart, and I had the opportunity to apologize for my inartful comments from last week. I sincerely extend this apology to anyone else whom I may have offended.
As Jon was kind enough to note in his show Monday night, I am very much opposed to hate and intolerance, in any form, and I have frequently spoken out against prejudice. Despite what my tired and mangled words may have implied, they were never intended to suggest any sort of narrow-mindedness and should never have been made.
In the aftermath of these comments, CNN and I have decided to part ways. However, I want to go on record to say that I have nothing but the highest regard for CNN and for my six wonderful years with them. I appreciate every opportunity that they have given me, and it has been a wonderful experience working for them. I have tremendous respect for everyone there, and I know that they feel the same about me. There are no hard feelings, just excitement about a new future of opportunities.
I look forward to my next step with great anticipation. In the meantime, I will continue to promote my book, “Conventional Idiocy,” in the hopes of broadening the discussion to get a better understanding between all Americans, regardless of race, creed or religion.
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
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What is it with the half-apologies? Is it that hard to say “what I said was wrong”? Instead it’s “I apologize to anyone who may have been offended” and “never intended to suggest any sort of narrow-mindedness” blah, blah, blah.
And then he goes out of his way to say that everyone at CNN has tremendous respect for him.
And THEN he plugs his book. Of course.
The annoying thing is, I’ve always found this guy pretty likable.
Sanchez is a well meaning blowhard. I feel equal parts bad for the guy and indifference. But I will miss his youtube intro voice over.
V
If I say “the majority of players in the NFL and NBA are black”, is this statement racist? No. It’s a statement based on statistics and fact. However, why is it when someone says that the majority of executives at media companies, newspapers, studios, networks and record labels are jewish, it’s deemed anti-semitic?
If you said it like Rick, then ya Bob. It is. Most of the time. Because when it’s said, it’s usually said in a negative context. It’s also simply not true. Many Jews in media? Sure. Majority? Not so much. Control? Ha!
You sir are and Anti-Semite… Just like Sanchez
JEWS DON’T CONTROL THE MEDIA, ZIONIST ELITES CONTROL THE MEDIA. I HAVE THE UTMOST RESPECT FOR 99 PERCENT OF THE JEWISH WORLD. elite zionists are scum and don’t even care about religion. That is NOT ANTI-SEMETIC, THAT IS A STRONG OPPOSITION TO ELITE ZIONISTS. ZIONISM IS A POLITICAL IDEOLOGY,IT IS NOT A RELIGION OR A CULTURE. IT IS NO DIFFERENT THAN WHAT THE MAFIA IS TO THE ITALIANS, WHAT THE I.R.A IS TO THE IRISH, OR BLACK PANTHERS ARE TO AFRICAN AMERICANS. MOST ANTI-ZIONISTS ARE JEWISH AND BELIEVE ZIONISM HIJACKED JUDAISM.TO CALL SOME ONE AN ANTI-SEMITE BECAUSE HE IS ANTI-ZIONIST IS NOT LOGICAL SIR.
It’s like this: If you said there were more African American players, you’re okay. But, if you sneeringly, sarcastically said that black players have an easier time of making it in the league, because they’re black, you’d probably have a problem on your hands. That, to me, is the more accurate analogy.
Best analogy that I have read on any site commenting on the Sanchez debacle.
Look, it can be a bit of a good o’le boys club and everyone knows it. But when you boil it down, who gives a $hit.
If me and my good friend Micky McIrish start a company and have to find staff, God forbid we hire some pale folk back at the island who might be in need of a job. And it stands to reason we might be more passionate about issues/topics related to our culture and upbringing.
As for a conspiracy, I’ll say two things. Stewart’s on TV b/c he’s witty and funny. If he wasn’t, then whoever’s “in charge” would can his a$$.
Cheddar always supersedes race, religion, gender & sexual orientation.
If the jews really did run everything, then my neighbor would be a rich poet and not a massage therapist.
Someone needs to write a paper on this weasel-word ‘inartful.’ Obama used it a lot, as a non-apology apology, during his presidential campaign. “It was inartful.” “I mispoke.” All very clever – too clever – very unsatisfying.
Also, weird how certain goyim seem to fixate on Jews as being the cause of all their problems.
Bob Jackson,
He didn’t say “a lot of people in Hollywood are Jewish”. That’s not a controversial statement, it’s merely a fact. Using the word “majority” would be either factually correct or factually incorrect, but again, non controversial.
But that’s not what he said. And you know it.
What he said was that by virtue of Jewish power in media, the Jews as a people are not an oppressed minority. As if, because there are some Jewish people in power in Hollywood, Jews nation-wide or world-wide don’t suffer bigotry or discrimination. Which is asinine.
That’s as stupid a statement as saying because Barack Obama is President, blacks no longer suffer racism. Or because the second most powerful person in the world is a woman, women don’t face sexism.
But he didn’t stop there. Oh no.
Lump that stupid statement with the realization that John Stewart is Jewish, and you realize he’s making a more broad-brush point that Stewart as a Jew and by extention Jews in general don’t understand him as a kid of the working class. Because, you know, all Jews are alike and have identical opinions. And they all stick together. And they don’t like, or can’t relate to working-class people with the last name “Sanchez”. Because, you know, Jews aren’t working class. (Of course not, they own all the banks.)
This is pretty bigoted stuff he’s wallowing around in.
What I’m saying is, Sanchez didn’t say “There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood” and leave it at that. Not by a long shot.
Siamang, you nailed it. Thank you.
(The Sanchez half-apology is pathetic. What a weasel. Now we know he really is a bigot.)
“Or because the second most powerful person in the world is a woman, women don’t face sexism.”
The Secretary of State for the US is the second most powerful person in the world? You’ve got a very high opinion of your country, there, don’t you. I don’t disagree with anything else you said, but I did find it ironic that you were blasting Sanchez’s comment for being not factual and controversial, and then say that.
Americans need to learn there’s an entire world outside their borders.
I agree, but it’ll never happen.
I don’t disagree that Americans need to learn about the world outside their borders.
I’m no tub-thumping all-American jingoist. Far, far from it.
I still think the US Secretary of State is (for better or worse, often worse) the second most powerful position in the world, in terms of the ability to balance the use of, and obviate the need for, the might of the most powerful military force on the globe. This may change in a decade, but it’s a fact today.
But even if I strongly DISagreed with American foreign policy, I’d still think that the US Secretary of State is an enormously powerful position.
But I’ll bite, who would YOU say is the second most powerful person in the world? Putin? Hu Jintao?
But of course, now we’re really off-topic. The topic is what Sanchez said about Hollywood Jews, and not what I said about the power of the position of the US Secretary of State.
@bob – because they’re not the majority? He was making a generalized statement about Jews, and whats worse is that he was using Jews in media to represent Jews in general. However, what he said wasn’t exactly cruel or harsh, it’s just he was generalizing about a race. It was misguided. I was shocked he got the boot.
American Jews make up only 2% of the population of America. Yet: 46% make over $100,000 per year, they make up 15% of the U.S. Senate, 13% of the U.S. House of Representatives, 67% of members of the Board of the Federal reserve, 33% of the U.S. Supreme Court. Media: Just taking CNN only, 55% of corporate officers for TBS, which owns CNN, are Jewish. On air, Larry King, John King, Howard Kurtz, Eliot Slpitzer, Jeffrey Toobin, Paula Zahn, etc.. Rick Sanchez has nothing to apologize for.
You forgot these: Jews make up .000001% of the NFL and .001% of the NBA.
And even less of the KKK!!!
They were never very well represented in the Nazi party, either.
Well good for them, if all Americans were that hard working and enterprising, can you imagine what else this great nation can accomplish?
John King is Jewish only by virtue of his marriage. He was born a Christian. And Paula Zahn – didn’t CNN fire her?
Nellie and Nikki,
Good “get” on Sanchez’ apology. I haven’t seen this anywhere else yet.
An idea – since so many of the comment sections on Deadline lately seem to take a political theme, how about you lose a lot of your boring stories on Hollywood and deal making ratings and instead cover politics, specifically, the war featuring the political right vs. the political left? And, when you do talk about Hollywood, how about identifying the players as right or left or Democrat or Republican? For example, I don’t know whether Charlie Sheen is a conservative or a libertard. I think your readers would be much more interested in this than some dumb deal he made.
More politics ala Drudge and less show biz please!
Cocaine is a helluva drug…..
Rick’s List sucked, and he was an opinionated almost shock jock posing as a news anchor. CNN wanted him out as his ratings were awful which matched his show.
The bottom line is the the bottom line. CNN was just looking for a reason to dump Rick, and he served up one on a silver platter.
CNN and the other media can make this out to be highly racist, but at the end of the day…it is not what was said…it is who said it.
This is not unlike some elected officials who can get away with cheating on one’s wife, public misstatements or corruption abuse. Some will be thrown out of office quickly, while other have the gravitas to survive.
Unfortunately for Rick…he doesn’t have it.
Bye, bye Rick!
“We control congress, we control the media, we control show biz and we control everything in America. In America you can critize God but not Israel”…
Israeli spokeswoman, Tzipora Menache.
If you Google that quote or woman’s name, it appears to be a hoax/lie that originated in pro-Palestinian media.
From ActaNonVerba…
“American Jews make up only 2% of the population of America. Yet: 46% make over $100,000 per year, they make up 15% of the U.S. Senate, 13% of the U.S. House of Representatives, 67% of members of the Board of the Federal reserve, 33% of the U.S. Supreme Court. Media: Just taking CNN only, 55% of corporate officers for TBS, which owns CNN, are Jewish. On air, Larry King, John King, Howard Kurtz, Eliot Slpitzer, Jeffrey Toobin, Paula Zahn, etc.. Rick Sanchez has nothing to apologize for.”
Wow, did not know those figures… if they truly are correct.
did he ever apologize for the human he ran over and killed?
The way he got the plug in for his book, he might as well BE Jewish.
There’s a cool little indie film coming out early next year called “Going thru a thing” which has a thru line of inappropriate generalities like the ignorant comments that Sanchez made. The movie redeems itself of course in its condemnation of these slurs… and the characters pick up on it and m=pass the message along. I hope Rick sees it and realizes there is a time and a place for expression where you can actually point at the elephant in the room and then chase it out too.
Haha! What about the owners of professional teams?
Oh, Rick Sanchez as a Cuban is opressing the Palestinians. Oh, wait that’s the Jews. Let’s hear people get angry about that for once.
And I assume you get equally angry that Castro has been oppressing the Cuban people since soon after he took power?
Right, because that distorted view of the conflict never gets play in the media.
Go read Hamas’ charter — and the P.L.O.’s charter while you’re at it — and then take another course in “Enabling Protracted Conflicts” at the Learning Annex.
Really? All Jews are oppressing Palestinians? Elizabeth’s comment is in itself grossly anti-Semitic.
And Jews blame tall blonde women for all their problems.
Rick Sanchez is Cuban Jew. He was talking about himself.
True, We can criticize anything but Isreal.
anyone who has seen this guy on tv knows that he is a dummy. he is one of the reasons i stopped watching cnn. i’m really glad he’s gone. along with larry. cnn is getting rid of the dead weight to make more room for the brains (like fareed and candy.) too bad they lost christine.
ActaNonVerba,
Why did you say “American Jews make up only 2% of the population of America. Yet…”
Why “yet”? Why not use “And” when you go on to list the incredible achievements of this minority group? Do you have an issue with it? It seems you do as a quick Google search shows you posted the same stats on several websites discussing the issue.
The reason Rick Sanchez got in trouble wasn’t because he was pointing out the fact that Jews are highly-represented in certain industries in proportion to their percentage of the overall American population, he was implying Jews control the news business.
Beyond the fact that this is factually incorrect (see below) it’s the same false charge made in the infamous forgery that was The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which stated that Jews secretly controlled the world for their own nefarious plans. You may not be aware of the damage this completely false claim has done to Jews throughout history, but it has been severe and deadly (it was a big part of Nazi propaganda), and so when someone brings it up by speaking in an “inartful” way it’s amazingly hurtful and even dangerous in how it keeps these hateful claims alive. There’s a nasty history to such statements and Rick kept that history going. As the anchorman at a major news network he should know better.
As to Rick’s claim of Jews controlling the news, to quote from Brian Palmer’s recent Slate.com article…
“If Sanchez was referring to people in the television news business, he’s wrong. Not one of the major television news operations—Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, CBS News, or NBC News—is currently headed by a Jewish executive. (That includes Ken Jautz, the man who fired Sanchez.) Or at least none of these executives has talked about being Jewish in a public forum. The Internet is littered with rumors about various media moguls being Jewish, but few of those claims are backed by any evidence.
There are more Jews at the head of the country’s major newspapers, but it’s still a stretch to say these publications are controlled by them. Even in New York City, where around 12 percent of the population is Jewish, there isn’t any indication of Jewish dominance. The Ochs Sulzberger family, which has controlled the New York Times for more than a century, is of Jewish origin. But current Executive Editor Bill Keller is not.
At the Wall Street Journal, the only hint of Jewish influence at the top is the persistent Internet rumor that the mother of Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of Journal parent News Corp., is Jewish. Murdoch has joked about the gossip but hasn’t addressed the whispers publicly… The Bancroft family, which controlled the Journal for nearly eight decades until they handed the reins to Murdoch in 2007, isn’t Jewish, nor is current Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson.
Jewish-American businessman Eugene Meyer bought the Washington Post in 1933. Philip Graham, his non-Jewish son-in-law, took over in 1946, and the paper has been published by gentiles ever since. Current Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli is not Jewish, nor are any of his top 12 editors. The Chandler family, which owned the Los Angeles Times for decades, is not Jewish. Sam Zell, who bought the paper in 2007, is a Jew, but top editor Russ Stanton is not.”
“CNN and I have decided to part ways.”
Not only can this guy not give a straight apology, he can’t admit he was fired.
His new book must be an auto-biography.
Based on your stats about the Jews running everything it would seem that the first thing kids graduating college with interest in politics, banking or media should do is find a local Chabad and get a copy of Judiasm for Dummies!
I am surprised that it took so long for Sanchez to get canned. It was an embarrisment for CNN to have him on the air pretending to be a journalist.