The Lost Rick Sanchez Tapes

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Sanchez Overboard
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Here at Random Pixels, we know when it's time to move on.

But South Florida and the nation are clearly hungry for more dirt news about Rick Sanchez. So we've come up with a couple of nuggets that have been tucked away on the Internet for years.

But first this.

A check of Google keyword activity shows that people are landing on my blog using the following search terms: "rick sanchez dui", "rick sanchez sally fitz", "rick sanchez sleeves rolled up", "rick sanchez metric system",and finally, "rick sanchez squatting over map of iraq."

Yes, America, 20 years ago during the first Gulf War, Rick Sanchez did a nightly war summary on WSVN in Miami while squatting over a map of Iraq. As former Miami Herald TV critic Hal Boedeker says, "Sanchez squatting over a map of Iraq. It’s just one of those images you can’t forget." More on that later.

When Sanchez finally does his first interview on this whole, sorry affair, I'm guessing he'll use the insanity defense. "Jon Stewart drove me over the edge," or something like that. He might even accuse Stewart of being a TV bully!

This morning's New York Times bears that out. A story about Sanchez's firing contained this line: "[Jon] Stewart has made jokes about Mr. Sanchez more than 20 times in the last five years, according to a search of the show’s Web site. Or as Mr. Sanchez put it, “You watch yourself on his show every day and all they ever do is call you stupid.”

But Stewart wasn't the first to lampoon Sanchez.

More than 20 years ago, in the 80's and 90's, Sanchez was mercilessly and unrelentingly skewered on a regular basis by Miami radio talk show host Neil Rogers. Rogers' humor was more vicious than anything Stewart ever did. And Rogers didn't just do a bit one time and retire it. Once he was onto something, he used it constantly.

When Sanchez married in the late 80's, someone sent Rogers a bootleg tape of him serenading his new bride. Neil's staff put together this spoof "Rick Sanchez Sings" infomercial.

But perhaps Rogers' most popular Sanchez bit was a spoof of him doing one of his nightly war segments while squatting over the map.