It seems everyone’s weighing on CNN’s firing of Rick Sanchez following his anti-Semitic rant on Pete Dominick‘s Sirius XM radio show last week in which he called out Daily Show host Jon Stewart as a bigot for having the audacity to mock his Ted Baxter-like on-air antics and went on to wail about supposed Jewish domination of CNN and the media as a whole.

So here, I go.

First of all, the suggestion that a Jewish agenda is somehow controlling the media is absurd. I’m a Catholic Christian who has worked in the media my entire adult life and I can honestly tell you that I have seen no such domination. If you tell me that there’s a liberal bias in most of the mainstream media or a conservative bias at Fox News, I’m there with you — because the facts demonstrably support either case. This is not to accuse CNN or Fox News of lying (I’ve worked at and have friends at both networks). Neither intentionally lies but there can be little doubt on which side of the political prism each views the world.

But Jewish domination of the media? If anything, it seems to me that Israel is routinely held to a tougher standard in the media than the rest of the world — expected to endure threats to its own security and very existence in a way that other nations would never accept or be expected to accept.

And, anti-Semitism when spouted from the left is almost completely ignored. For instance,unless I dozed off (which I don’t believe I did), Oliver Stone’s recent similar tirade (for which he has, to his credit, apologized) wasn’t even brought up in televised interviews he did with NBC’s Matt Lauer and CBS’ Katie Couric to promote his new movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. The movie itself, BTW, is a brilliant parable against greed in all its forms — one which I’d heartily recommend seeing.

But, back to my point, if the media were truly obsessed with Jewish sensibilities Stone’s comments (regardless of the fact that he apologized for them) would have come up in those interviews.

So, to all those internet commenters who insist that Rick was fired for telling the truth, he wasn’t. His rant was more likely just the final straw. Not to kick a man when he’s down, but he had said an awful lot of, as Jon Stewart would way, “pokable” things on the air.

Speaking of Jon Stewart, though I don’t always actually agree with him, I continue to find him to be one of the more intelligent and graceful commentators out there. When dealing with the Sanchez situation on Monday’s Daily Show, he was sharp yet with a touch of compassion — ending his response this way:

Here’s the deal. If CNN got rid of Rick Sanchez because they didn’t like
his show, fine. We weren’t that crazy about it either. But if they fired him for
making some intemperate statements and some Jew-bating, I gotta tell ya. I’m not
even sure Sanchez believes what he was saying...

It’s a chance to get in touch with not our dirtier, but our better
Sanchezes. Words to live by. I think the guy’s probably got a good
heart.

Nicely said, Jon.

Meanwhile, Sanchez has reportedly apologized to Stewart. Let’s hope and pray he gets up, dusts himself off, garners some wisdom from the incident, and goes on to do great things in the future. Everyone makes mistakes and to quote the great Yogi named Berra “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

Update/Note: Upon hearing a greater portion of the interview, it is fair to note that Sanchez (after being pressed by the interviewer) did walk back his charge that Stewart is a bigot — softening his wording to “prejudicial.” He also didn’t actually use the phrase “Jewish domination of the media” though, I think it is fair to say, that concept was strongly implied.