Seriously Silly

Recently CNN anchor/reporter/other Rick Sanchez called Jon Stewart a bigot and intimated that Jews control the media. CNN fired Sanchez and most rational and/or decent people agreed that he ought to be fired.Yglesias, as is his wont, weighed in and got all contrarian. He sighingly accepts that

[a]s someone who’s both Cuban and Jewish, I suppose it’s my duty to say something about Rick Sanchez, namely that summarily firing him seems excessive.

He is weighing in because of his ethnicity, although I think he meant something like Cuban-American but, who knows?, maybe he is a Cuban national. Who knows.

In any event, he quickly turns the discussion to one of inside the business of journalism rather than the morals and ethics of firing anti-Semites, or -- in any event -- a guy who got fired for making anti-Semitic remarks. Yglesias argues that

[i]f . . . we assume that CNN didn’t have some other reason to fire him. Obviously, the company is within its rights to decide that an anchor is underperforming and then, when he does something offensive and pisses people off, seize the opportunity to dump him. But on the assumption that he was doing a good job as an anchor and then made anti-semitic remarks, I wouldn’t have fired him.

Yglesias' glib contrarianim lead him to make glibly contrarian remarks on events like this.  Sure, most reasonable and rational people would fire Sanchez for making loathsome remarks, but not Yglesias. The standard for firing offensive people is if they are bad at their job.  If you are an under-performing and offensive employee? Fire away. Good at your job?  No firing allowed. Leaving aside the issue of how someone who is supposed to comment intelligently about the events of the day can comment intelligently about the events of the day when they think something as bizarre as what Sanchez thinks is really beyond me.  Why are successful people above firing for making anti-Semitic remarks?  Success, in Yglesias' world -- it would seem, inoculates against responsibility.

He goes on 

[t]here are a lot of ways of looking at this, but the bottom line to me is that if the concern is that there’s some legion of Rick Sanchez fans out there harboring anti-semitic views, sacking him like this is only going to make the problem worse. See, Sanchez spoke the truth and they got rid of him. What would make the problem better is some kind of apology, a beer summit with Jon Stewart, and continued coverage of the news with no further outbursts.

There are lots of whys to think about this.  The obvious one is that Sanchez said something idiotic and seems to actually believe it, and, therefore, CNN rightly fired him.  Another that no one but Yglesias thinks is the case is the one we need to focus on.  Why?  Because the voices in his head are much better for making glib remarks than actual discussions. Yglesias argues that even if Sanchez is a failure and an anti-Semite firing him is only going to prove to people whose beliefs have proven sturdily resistant facts and arguments that their irrational, evidence-free beliefs are true.  You know what else anti-Semites use as evidence for their beliefs?  The Holocaust, that's what. Whether Sanchez is fired or not will have no influence on anti-Semites because they are irrational, whackdoodles. Either that or we should stop all this teaching the Holocaust stuff for fear that it will only further inflame Antisemitism.  Really, he is that silly.

Yglesias points out that

Now of course on the other hand getting fired for something like this isn’t the world’s greatest injustice either and I’m not going to start marching around with a “Free Rick Sanchez!” sign.

Which seems reasonable enough, except that he goes on to observe

that we have very few Hispanic voices in English-language coverage of American politics and I’m not thrilled about losing one.

Sanchez is not a anti-Semitic buffoon but rather an authentic voice for Hispanic interests.  Is Antisemitism really that important to the Hispanic community?  I find that hard to believe. Sanchez seems like a buffoon on a number of fronts, and, outside of Laurel and Hardy's success in Spanish-language version films, I can't see any reason to think that Hispanismo[1] includes a buffoon component. He concludes

(Unless maybe CNN wants to heal the breach by awarding me a lucrative contract.)

Ha, see what he did there? Finally got it right. Give a careerist, glibbertarian, spoutter of nonsensical contrarianism enough money and he'll be your bff.


UPDATE:
To be  clear, I mean not marching for Sanchez was reasonable; the implication that being fired for making crazy anti-Semitic comments is in any way an injustice is, of course, monumentally silly.

[1] No, I don't actually think that Yglesias was thinking about Hispanismo