Rick & Jon Make Up... Sort Of

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Suzanne Sanchez - rick apologized to jon stewart today.they had a good talk. jon was gracious and called rick, "thin-skinned." he's right. rick feels horrible that in an effort to make a broader point about the media, his exhaustion from working 14 hr days for 2 mo. straight, caused him to mangle his thought process inartfully. he got ...caught up in the banter and deeply apologizes to anyone who was offended by his unintended comments.

Monday at 4:29pm [Monday, October 4, 2010]

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Sanchez, Stewart Reportedly Bury the Hatchet

Updated: 1 day 4 hours ago

(Oct. 5) -- Fired CNN anchor Rick Sanchez appears to have apologized to Jon Stewart for calling him a bigot during a rant about Jews' minority status and media influence in a radio interview last week that cost him his job.

That's according to his wife's Facebook page, where she wrote in a status update Monday that Sanchez apologized to Stewart, host of "The Daily Show," and that the two "had a good talk."

"jon was gracious and called rick, 'thin-skinned.' he's right," Suzanne Sanchez wrote. "rick feels horrible that in an effort to make a broader point about the media, his exhaustion from working 14 hr days for 2 mo. straight, caused him to mangle his thought process inartfully."



Appearing Thursday on the Sirius radio program "Stand Up! With Pete Dominick," Sanchez said Stewart, who is Jewish, has no idea what it's like to be a minority and to be discriminated against. Sanchez, who was born in Cuba and grew up in Florida, said blacks and Hispanics are more oppressed, and that he'd experienced discrimination in his own career at CNN.

"He got caught up in the banter and deeply apologizes to anyone who was offended by his unintended comments," Suzanne Sanchez wrote.

On his Comedy Central show Monday night, Stewart didn't mention the apology, but he did discuss the Sanchez affair, joking that he was dismayed by the timing of the CNN anchor's radio comments because "The Daily Show" doesn't tape on Fridays -- meaning he had to wait until Monday to air a response. By that time, CNN had already fired Sanchez.

But Stewart did manage to find a venue to react publicly to the scandal over the weekend, at a fundraiser for autism education in New York on Saturday night. Stewart asked the audience to donate to the cause, but qualified his request with a joking allusion to Sanchez: "If you went on radio and said the Jews control the media ... you may want to hold on to your money."

On Monday, Stewart replayed clips from Sanchez's radio interview, pausing the audio at one point to exclaim, "Oh my God! Rick Sanchez knows my name!"

He acknowledged that Sanchez objected to the way he'd poked fun at what he called CNN's "quite frankly, extremely poke-able show," but said the anchor may have missed part of the point.

"We weren't making fun of Rick Sanchez because of some slight to his ethnicity. It's just that we see him as a complex television character who's flawed but fascinating," Stewart said. "And now they fire the guy," he continued, expressing some sympathy for Sanchez.

"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-baiting, I gotta tell ya. I'm not even sure Sanchez believes what he was saying," Stewart said. "I think the guy's probably got a good heart."

Pete Dominick, the Sirius radio host on whose program Sanchez made his fateful remarks, has also expressed regret for the CNN anchor's sacking. On his radio show Monday, Dominick said Sanchez came into the interview determined to lash out at his critics.

Sanchez began the interview "with a live grenade in his mouth, and he pulled the pin," Dominick said Monday, according to The Huffington Post. "I tried to put it back for him but he wasn't having it."

"I'm sorry, sincerely, for his family that he was fired. It's terrible," Dominick said. Dominick also said that he wants all the hype over his Sanchez interview "to die."

But it hasn't yet: David Letterman also featured the Sanchez debacle on his "Late Show" on Monday, dubbing his regular Top 10 List as a list of "Rick Sanchez Excuses."

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