Rick Sanchez interview…
The New York Observer’s Zachary Roth interviews CNN’s Rick Sanchez…
One Thursday in July, CNN’s Rick Sanchez received an e-mail from network president Jonathan Klein.
“I need a hard-throwing righty out of the bullpen,” to fill in for Paula Zahn as anchor for a week in the crucial 8 p.m. weekday time slot, Mr. Klein wrote, according to Mr. Sanchez. “Can you be in New York by Monday?”
That flight isn’t more than a couple of hours, but the distance between his gig as a weekend daytime anchor for CNN, based in Atlanta, was a world away. This was the big leagues: If only for a week, the energetic, 49-year-old Cuban immigrant would go head-to-head against Fox’s fed-up conservative, Bill O’Reilly, and MSNBC’s liberal sophisticate, Keith Olbermann.
He threw a few suits in a bag, jumped on a plane and covered for Ms. Zahn for a week. Things went well. So well, in fact, that the following week, after CNN announced Ms. Zahn was leaving the network, Mr. Klein asked: “Can you do another week?”
That week, too, went well.
“So then he says, ‘Can you do a month?’” Mr. Sanchez remembered, in an interview at his new office in the Time Warner Center. Next, he remembered, it was, “Can you go through Labor Day?” Then: “Can you go through November?” And now, said Mr. Sanchez, “We’re going through February,” when the network’s new star hire, Campbell Brown, will step into the slot.
Zachary Roth actually calls Keith Olbermann a “liberal sophisticate”? A “sophisticate”? The world of an Olbyloon ….
Comment by Tom — October 10, 2007 @ 11:34 am
You mean using puppets to explain “the news” isn’t sophisticated?
Comment by ImNotBlue — October 10, 2007 @ 11:47 am
So Klein asked for a hard-throwing righty and instead got a limp-wristed lefty. Rick Sanchez is nothing more than a B-team version of Keith Olbermann.
Comment by Caufield — October 10, 2007 @ 1:25 pm
I need a hard-throwing righty?Are you telling me they don’t have one in the entire CNN corp? Rick Sanchez is not a righty. CASE CLOSED!
Comment by SHANE — October 10, 2007 @ 6:50 pm
I don’t think Klein was speaking of “righty” in political terms! There is no way he’d be asking for that! Cnn is loaded with liberals, from their morning program all the way until late evening. Well, I guess we could say Lou Dobbs is not a liberal elitist snob, at least not like the rest of the Cnn crew. He does have some common sense.
Comment by california dreamin — October 10, 2007 @ 8:50 pm