Rick Sanchez is on "The List That Nobody Gives a Rat's Ass About"

CNN has announced the sudden departure of the blow-dried host of Rick's List, a sophomoric programme that blended fluffly headline coverage with incipid viewer feedback via Twitter.  Despite its lack of hard substance, news fibre, insight, and depth, Rick's List occupied a sizeable slice of programming real estate -- two hours on weekday afternoons and one hour of prime time in the evenings.

Sanchez's sudden 'departure' comes directly on the heels of some unfortunate and unguarded comments during an interview with Pete Dominick on XM Sirius Radio, in which he called Comedy Central's Jon Stewart "a bigot", and then went on a strange tangent about the Jews' control of the media.

Initially, Sanchez defended his characterization of Stewart as "a bigot" by saying only that he surrounds himself with people who are a lot like him.  Dominick pressed Sanchez for more clarity in his remarks, and in so doing, invited Sanchez to dig a deeper whole.

"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? Yeah," Sanchez responded.

Of course, Sanchez's grievance against Stewart seems to be a little more personal than ethno-cultural -- less about skin tone than about being thin-skinned.  "That's what happens when you watch yourself on his show every day," said Sanchez, "and all they ever do is call you stupid."

Of course, Stewart would not have been the first to do that.  Talk radio and Fox News host Glenn Beck also famously called Sanchez "the dumbest man on television."



Yes, you heard that correctly. When the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted in April 2010, and the reporting was left in the capable hands of Rick Sanchez, he actually said: “When you think of a volcano, you think of Hawaii and long words like that. You don’t think of Iceland. You think it’s too cold to have a volcano there.”

Ah, Rick, we'll miss these kinds of 'Ted Baxter-isms'. Buena suerte, amigo. Oh, and the next time you make a list, take a cue from Santa Claus and check it twice.