In a terse statement, the US cable network CNN announced that daytime anchor Rick Sanchez was no longer employed, only a day after Sanchez made a string of controversial remarks, accusing Daily Show host Jon Stewart of being a "bigot" and made sneering comments about American Jews as "an oppressed minority".

The brief statement from CNN this evening reads in full:

"Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well."

On Thursday, Sanchez gave an interview on XM Radio in which he called Stewart – who has frequently poked fun at Sanchez on the Daily Show – a bigot before correcting himself and describing Stewart as "prejudiced" after being challenged by the interviewer, Pete Dominick.

But what set off a storm of controversy on blogs, after a transcript of Sanchez's interview was circulated, was his remarks about Jews. Here's a partial transcript of the exchange that followed:

Rick Sanchez: I don't think it's a conscious thing. I just think it's important that people who are not minorities understand that those of us who are – and very few of us will say the things that I just said – are actually more complex than they think we are. Pete Dominick: [Jon] Stewart's a minority as much as you are. He's Jewish. Sanchez: Yeah. Yeah. Very powerless people. Please. What are you, kidding? Dominick: You're telling me that.... Sanchez: I'm telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they – the people in this country who are Jewish – are an oppressed minority? Yeah.

Several US Jewish groups called on Sanchez to retract his remarks but the anchor made no public comment. He did not appear to anchor his daily Rick's List segment on CNN on Friday afternoon, before the network's statement was released.

Greg Sargeant, a blogger for the Washington Post, had this explanation for Sanchez's remarks:

It's not quite clear what Sanchez means here. Again: If he was referring derisively to the people who run all the networks as Jewish, that's obviously awful. But reading the full context, it seems at least possible that when he referred to Stewart and the people at the networks he was referring not to Jews, but to snooty white liberal elites who don't understand minorities. After all, that's who he'd been talking about during the bulk of the whole exchange. The problem for Sanchez is that even if that were what he meant, he said it just before his sneering dismissal of the idea that Jews are an oppressed minority. So even if he did mean to say what I suggested above, it may be tough for him to get his clarification taken seriously.

A partial transcript of the interview with Sanchez is here.

US readers can enjoy The Daily Show's jokes about Rick Sanchez over the years collected in that link.