Hitchens: Rehire Rick Sanchez

Rick Sanchez is out of a job and apparently sorry about it, but exactly what is the problem with pointing out the obvious power of the Jewish lobby, asks Christopher Hitchens over at Slate. Washington's elite plainly swoon before pro-Israel group AIPAC, Hitchens writes, and the author's own "overlapping world of the news media, publishing, the academy, and the think-tank industry" isn't even "imaginable without the presence of liberal American Jews."

Hitchens acknowledges "buried resentment" in Sanchez's diatribe, which also implied "liberalism was linked to a single ethnicity," but "there is nothing criminal about this." Further, his lightning ouster seems to indicate a network mentality obsessed with playing it safe. "The best way to demonstrate the hidden influence of the chosen people would be for Jon Stewart and others to join me in calling for Rick Sanchez's reinstatement," Hitchens concludes. "If it then didn't happen, it would help us understand who really pulls the strings around here." (More Christopher Hitchens stories.)