(JTA) — Fired CNN anchor Rick Sanchez apologized to Jon Stewart for calling him a bigot and implying that Jews control the media.
In a statement issued Wednesday, Sanchez said he called the star of Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show" earlier in the week and they had a "very good conversation."
"As Jon was kind enough to note in his show Monday night, I am very much opposed to hate and intolerance, in any form, and I have frequently spoken out against prejudice," Sanchez’s statement said. "Despite what my tired and mangled words may have implied, they were never intended to suggest any sort of narrow-mindedness and should never have been made."
Sanchez, a native of Cuba, alleged during a freewheeling exchange with Pete Dominick, a Latino stand-up comedian and radio show host, that Stewart singled him out as the butt of many jokes because of white bigotry.
Dominick pushed back, saying that Stewart, because he is Jewish, is himself a member of 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? Yeah," he said.
Sanchez’s wife, Suzanne, wrote on her Facebook profile Monday that "Rick apologized to Jon Stewart today. They had a good talk. Jon was gracious and called Rick ‘thin-skinned.’ He’s right."
Her husband, she added, was "caught up in the banter and deeply apologizes to anyone who was offended by his unintended comments."
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