News Anchor Bullied by Comedian Commits Professional Suicide

NEW YORK (TheSkunk.org) — He just couldn’t take it any more. Every weeknight for years, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez would be taunted and tormented by an older and wittier colleague from a neighboring network. The unwelcome barbs from Jon Stewart, belittling Sanchez’s intelligence and professionalism, became so unbearable for the newsman, he took his own career.

NEW YORK (TheSkunk.org) — He just couldn’t take it any more.  Every weeknight for years, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez would be taunted and tormented by an older and wittier colleague from a neighboring network.  The unwelcome barbs from Jon Stewart, belittling Sanchez’s intelligence and professionalism, became so unbearable for the newsman, he took his own career.

“This bullying was done in full view of the public,” said an assistant to Sanchez’s agent, who was struggling to hold back tears. “Yet no one stepped in to stop it. And now he’s… off the air.”

According to the Society for the Prevention of Professional Suicide, every three minutes a member of the media is terminated as a result of a lethal combination of words they choose to emit from their own mouths.  Like Sanchez, many of these forgotten anchors and reporters were bullied daily with zingers and one-liners, until one day they simply gave up the will to disseminate information to the public, choosing instead to end it all by ranting anti-Semitic and/or racial slurs against their employers.

“Look at all the journalists who threw away their own livelihoods after being attacked by Don Rickles,” noted an ASPPS spokesperson. “Newsmen with names like Fester McErmonnany and Lester Poodle are little known today because — after enduring the stress of incessantly being called ‘hockey pucks’ in Rickles’s Vegas act every Tuesday night — they were compelled to unleash obscene and disturbing vitriole against their own networks.”

The phenomenon of comics beating up news personalities is nothing new, according to Professor Jonas Janos of the University of Minnesota, where Sanchez received his undergraduate degree in journalism. “Look at what happened to Helen Thomas,” he said, referring to the legendary journalist who ended her own career in broad daylight after being ridiculed by an Israeli improv team, which wreaked havoc on her self-esteem and caused her to advise all the Jews in the world to move back to Poland. “She reported the news objectively for over fifty years before squeezing an opinionated slur out of her ass and snuffing out her day job.”

The ASPPS spokesperson believes the Sanchez case should be a wake-up call to all Americans. “We need to protect and nurture our news people,” she declared. “Rick Sanchez was a vibrant anchorman in the prime of his life, who would still be with us every day at 3 to 5 pm eastern time were in not for the barrage of insults and often hilarious verbal abuse hailed upon him by a cowardly bully and his Emmy winning writing staff.”

“What happened to Rick Sanchez is a national tragedy,” added Janos. “But, as an avid fan of the Jon Stewart show, I have to admit — it was very funny.”

Braddon Mendelson