No Joke: CNN’s Rick Sanchez Diagnosed Mentally Retarded In Grade School, Killed A Man In Hit And Run DUI – With Video
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Alright, I was pulling your leg in a satire last time. But not this time. Turns out the truth is worse than my imagineering. But it sure explains a lot. Particularly when you re-watch the Joe the Plumber video after reading the backstory.
Slick Rick
Why won’t those mean, old, sniping critics just quiet down?
Wake Up and Smile!
That’s the name of the imaginary early-morning news show in one of the funniest Saturday Night Live skits ever. Former cast members Will Ferrell and Nancy Walls play anchors who are full of cheer until, “Good God no!” their teleprompter breaks. After Ferrell repeats the last line on the prompter — “I understand you have some cooking tips for us, Diane” — several times, the pair is forced to improvise.
“Diane… I had a notion the other day.”
“Uh… well… uh…notions make… uh… this country happen.”
“I… I was thinking someone should get a group together… uh… with guns to sweep out those ghettos.”
“I… drive a red car.”
“Make sure those poor people stay away from it… they’ve got sores.”
Even as he’s uttering the words, Ferrell is looking around helplessly, mortified at the unexpected peek into his buried consciousness. The panic level rises, and ultimately Ferrell decapitates the weatherman and gnaws on his bloody skull.
I love the skit because it confirms the natural suspicion that psychosis, social isolation, and homicidal violence lurk behind the smiles on many happy morning news shows. These days, one of the happiest airs from 9 a.m. to noon daily on MSNBC and stars none other than South Florida’s own favorite son, Rick Sanchez, who was, of course, anchorman for the local Fox affiliate (WSVN-TV, Channel 7) before taking a job with the cable network 20 months ago. While here, his trademark was an uncanny ability to make a fatality on Interstate 95 seem as important and dramatic as a rogue state’s nuclear attack on America.
So how, after completing his first calendar year on the job, is Sanchez really faring on the national stage? Starting with good news: He was nominated in 2002 for a national Alma Award for Hispanic journalists. The bad news is that he didn’t win it, and some of his stiffest competition was Geraldo Rivera. (The winner was Elizabeth Vargas of 20/20.) Sanchez did take home a prize recently, though, something called the “Ted Baxter Award for Phoniest Voice,” which was presented by TVNow.com, a website that provides entertainment news.
As if that weren’t distinction enough, he gave the commencement speech at Ramapo College, a small school in New Jersey. Unfortunately, most of the graduates left early to commence partying, according to a May 23 article in the Bergen County Record. Also on a down note, Sanchez said during the speech that his first-grade teacher labeled him mentally retarded. “I swear to God, it’s right there in my transcript,” he told the depleted crowd.
That revelation provides great intrigue, since we’re left to wonder if the teacher was right. Rick’s wild success as a news-reader would indicate that his IQ is on the sunny side of 70, but that heavy voice, large Cro-Magnon skull, and seemingly endless amazement at the most banal of facts… I don’t know, toss a coin.
Whatever the answer, his commencement confession helps to explain an exchange on MSNBC a year ago. While Sanchez was busy interrupting a grief expert, he offered that his wife had a deep fear of intimacy. He hinted that her distance was the result of psychological problems, when, of course, it proves only that the woman is perfectly sane. Later, the expert (I don’t recall her name) said that many children who lose parents wind up trying to fill the void of loss by overachieving. To this, Sanchez exclaimed — with that smiling, wide-eyed amazement he should patent — something to the effect of, “So it can actually be a good thing.” Had the expert known about that first-grade diagnosis, she might have patted the poor anchor on the head, given him a little hug, and said, “No, honey, it’s a bad thing.” As it was, she just seemed taken aback and told Sanchez that she wouldn’t really put it that way. Then she muttered something about irreparable lifelong traumas.
Unfortunately, this new year didn’t begin with any mental fireworks from our former Fox frontman. Just last Friday, Sanchez was interviewing a doctor named Robert Zaleski about the cost of medical-malpractice insurance. The M.D. said he paid $800 for insurance in 1980 and now pays 200 times that. “I’ll let you do the math,” he told Sanchez.
“Good God!” Rick exclaimed. “That’s $500,000.”
“No, it’s about $160,000. I’ll do the math,” Zaleski deadpanned, and Sanchez apologized for his multiplication mistake.
That Sanchez may well be mentally challenged puts all the criticism of him in a new light. It’s mean, really. People seem to get their kicks from pointing out his more embarrassing gaffes, like the time he accidentally called Jesse Jackson “Mr. Sharpton.” A peeved Jackson tried to correct Sanchez but was cut off by a commercial break. Some nitpickers took umbrage when Sanchez referred to the two D.C. sniper suspects, John Muhammad and Lee Malvo, as “these two gentlemen,” but I think he was just being polite. And it’s hard to forget the time he called Texas Republican Dick Armey, then-House majority leader, “Dick Leader Armey.”
His critics don’t stop there, however. They have the audacity to judge our ambitious anchorman. The most in-depth critique comes from Barry Crimmins, a veteran political humorist who wrote a web column this fall about Sanchez. Crimmins was upset that the MSNBC talker happily called the tale of death and destruction in Palestine a “great story.”
“I couldn’t believe someone could employ a superlative after seeing a tale of such boundless grief and horror,” Crimmins wrote. “But then, this was my first dose of Rick Sanchez.”
Yet it still adds up to a lot of negative hype. I mean, it’s not like Sanchez ever killed anybody. At least not intentionally. In 1990, he accidentally (and, yes, drunkenly) ran his brand-new Volvo into a fan after a Dolphins’ football game in the parking lot of what was then called Joe Robbie Stadium. The victim, Jeffrey Smuzinick, was paralyzed and later died at the age of 35 of complications related to his injuries. After fleeing the scene of the accident, Sanchez went home and drank some more so it could never be proven that he was actually drunk at the time it occurred. He ultimately pleaded no contest to DUI.
He’s entertaining, especially when he’s not really trying to be. And props should also go out to MSNBC for hiring him and, in the process, giving disabled people around the world new hope that they one day might land a daytime show on a national cable news network.
We should also be grateful to MSNBC for giving the man a teleprompter to guide him. All I ask is that they never, ever let it break.
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