Rick Sanchez, Jon Stewart

Somehow, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable or irrational to deny that Jews are a persecuted minority. Not in the United States, certainly.

Rick Sanchez was fired from his job as anchor at CNN after criticizing Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. Sanchez appeared on Pete Dominick’s Sirius radio show.

Sanchez called Stewart a "bigot", bigoted against anyone who was different from him. Which might be fair criticism.

An article in The People's Daily World some years ago generally praised The Daily Show but noted that their coverage of foreign leaders generally consisted of making fun of their names.

Sanchez talked about Stewart's bourgeois background. His mother was an educational consultant, his father a physics professor. And he said that Stewart looks down on people from a working class background---like Sanchez whose father was a garbage man by trade.

Dominick, who was interviewing Sanchez, argued that, as a Jew, Stewart would identify with oppressed people. A silly statement. Ask any Palestinian.

In any case, Sanchez seemed to be talking about unconscious racism--racism from white upper-class northeastern liberals who fancy themselves as liberal or progressive.

Sanchez scoffed at the idea that Jews are oppressed and pointed out the number of Jews in positions of power in the television networks. It seems like a natural thing for him to mention since he was there to talk about his work in television in the first place. So now, of course, Sanchez is being accused of claiming that "Jews control the media".

For years, in reference to African-Americans, we've been told "It's not about race---it's about class"--that, for example, there shouldn't be affirmative action for blacks, just for poor people. When cops abuse black people, we're supposed to thinks it's because they're poor, not because they're black. (When cops abuse black people who aren't poor, then blacks are elitists picking on working class cops.)

But, apparently, with white ethnics, it's not about class, it's about race. Sanchez focused entirely on Stewart's bourgeois background. He said that Stewart had a problem with anyone different from him, and he explained what he meant in terms of Stewart's class background. It was Dominick who brought up Stewart's being Jewish. Sanchez is being smeared--and has been fired from his job--for not conceding that New York celebrity millionaire Jon Stewart is a pitiful victim.

I don't know anything about Sanchez. I've never watched him on CNN. I do watch The Daily Show, so I've probably seen Jon Stewart mocking him. But I tend to be on his side about this.