Public apology from a disgraced anchor

In the front of the warmly lit sanctuary of the Carelebach Synagogue, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach accepted Rick Sanchez’s apology.

Sanchez, the former host of Rick’s List, a program on CNN, was fired from his position after making negative comments about Jews on a program on Sirius radio. Describing Jon Stewart, the Jewish host of the popular Daily Show program, Sanchez said he was “part of left-wing elite Northeast Establishment” and a “bigot.” When the radio host pointed out that Stewart was Jewish, Sanchez responded, “Very powerless people. He’s such a minority … 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?”

In the interview, Sanchez continued that Stewart’s father could relate to his experience growing up in poverty, but Steward could not.

The event at the synagogue was one of the many apologies that Sanchez has delivered since making his comments. For Boteach, Sanchez was another star whose image he was helping to rehabilitate. Boteach also helped Michael Jackson after he was accused of making anti-Semitic comments in one of his albums. (Boteach, never one to miss an opportunity of capitalization, also released a book after Jackson’s death called, “The Michael Jackson Tapes.”)

“All a man has is his name,” Boteach said. “His innocence is his principal possession, when it is tainted he has a right to defend himself.”

During the program, Sanchez explained this comment as having nothing to do with Stewart’s Jewishness, but with Stewart’s being part of an elite that creates, in his words, a “glass ceiling.”

“My words were not about being Hispanic but about being an outsider,” Sanchez said, before explaining that his comments were also caused by Steward’s ridicule of him on The Daily Show.

“I took it to heart,” Sanchez said.

“I do not believe you are anti-Semitic prejudiced or bigoted,” Boteach told Sanchez, before describing him as a “Broken American Male,” the title of another of Boteach’s books.

Boteach also offered his own validation of part of Sanchez’s comments.

“I think you were saying that Jews [in America] have not suffered,” Boteach said. “There is northing wrong with that statement.”

What emerged from the evening was a sympathetic if occasionally self-pitying look at a prominent journalist, whose future is uncertain.

“I just didn’t want to be called dumb,” Sanchez said.

After the interview, a number of questions were taken from the audience. Most were friendly and supportive towards Sanchez, though one questioner was hostile, Boteach told Sanchez it was an “opportunity.” After an hour and a half, Sanchez’s therapy session concluded.