A couple of weeks back, we (the Jewish community) were up in arms when Rich Sanchez claimed, like so many before him, that the Jews run the media. Whether or not Sanchez is an actual anti-Semite is not at issue, because his comment is one of the oldest Jew baiting lines in the book.
Sanchez, as most of you know, was fired by CNN. And even if he misspoke, he still deserved to be reprimanded.
So why is it that when a news anchor says something offensive about Muslims, he is simply asked to apologize on air and clarify what he meant?
I’m speaking, of course, about Fox & Friends morning host, Brian Kilmeade. Kilmeade, last week, made the claim that “not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.” That would be the equivalent of saying, “not all Jews are bankers, but Jews do run all the banks.”
Yet somehow Kilmeade wasn’t fired. I haven’t even seen him being pressured to be fired. Why is this the case? Shouldn’t the Jewish community in particular, who is hypersensitive to offensive and anti-Semitic comments in the media, be leading this charge?
This isn’t me saying that Jews are too sensitive when it comes to comments like the ones Rick Sanchez made. However, if we as a community are going to make a big deal out of anti-Semitic comments on TV, then we should go beyond anti-Semitism.
Kilmeade claims that he was arguing that all the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 were Muslim, and that he did not actually mean that all terrorists in general are Muslim. But who cares? I’m sure if you ask Rich Sanchez to clarify his position, he’d tell you that obviously Jews don’t run Hollywood in the media. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have been fired.
Jehan Harney over at Huffington Post has more on the issue. She’s worth checking out.
Here is Kilmeade, in his own words:
