Rick's Gone, Finally

Rick Sanchez always seemed to be a news anchor adrift. He was a light-weight news anchor. He simply should never have had his job on a national (U.S.) cable news network. He was not good enough, not knowledgeable enough.

There are people one meets who have such depth of knowledge that they make you feel that no matter what you ask them, they'll know the answer. Rick Sanchez wasn't one of those people. In fact, Sanchez left you feeling that no matter what you asked him, he'd be stumped.

Do you recall when an earthquake rocked Chile and a Tsunami warning was issued for Hawaii? Sanchez was following the story and used a map to make it all clear. He pointed to a group of islands in the Pacific, below the equator and off Chile, and noted the close proximity of Hawaii to Chile. The islands he pointed to were the Galapagos Islands!

Sanchez made lots of these "oops." And Jon Stewart and Stephen Cobert had fun at the handsome CNN news anchor's expense. Well last Thursday, all the Sanchez pent-up anger burst out during an interview with Pete Dominick on Sirius Radio. "You watch yourself on his show every day," said Sanchez, "and all they ever do is call you stupid."

Sanchez was lashing out:

"I think to some extent Jon Stewart and [Stephen] Colbert are the same way. I think Jon Stewart's a bigot," he said. "I think he looks at the world through, his mom, who was a school teacher, and his dad, who was a physicist or something like that. Great, I'm so happy that he grew up in a suburban middle class New Jersey home with everything you could ever imagine."

Stewart was not the only person whom Sanchez found was insulting him, treating him with condescension. He said a lot of elite Northeast establishment liberals . . . "look at a guy like me" and automatically see a guy "who belongs in the second tier and not the top tier." Sanchez is Cuban-American.

Later, Sanchez retracted the word "bigot" and instead described the Comedy Central fake newsman as "prejudicial."

When confronted with the argument that Stewart with his Jewish heritage was a member of an oppressed minority just like Sanchez with his Latino background, the newscaster would have none of it. He argued that Stewart, as a Jew, was a member of powerful group.

He said sarcastically, ". . . I'm telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they --- the people in this country who are Jewish --- are an oppressed minority . . . "

Friday Sanchez was replaced on air by Brooke Baldwin who has substituted for him in the past. The question, "Would Sanchez be back," was soon answered. CNN issued a statement saying:

"Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well."

What Sanchez and so many others don't understand is that being elite is not a quick, easy insult. Once, it was a compliment. The elite at one time referred to the best members of a larger group or body and not necessarily just the wealthiest, most famous, or most powerful.

What will be his next career move, well he could push his new book — entitled, believe it or not, “Conventional Idiocy.” Even Sanchez isn't always wrong.