Rick Sanchez has been fired from CNN for flying off the handle during a radio interview and accidentally telling people what he really thinks.

"Deep down, when they look at a guy like me, they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier, and not the top tier," the 52-year-old said.

He then pointed out Comedy Central's Jon Stewart, calling him a bigot with “white, liberal establishment point of view" and accusing “The Daily Show” host of picking on Sanchez's on-air mistakes because of his race.

"Here's what they do. This is the game they play: 'I just picked on Fox News, because they just had a bold-faced [sic] lie about something -- dammit, that means I gotta find something on CNN. Oh, I know… wait, hold on, let me find, oh that Rick Sanchez, that little Puerto Rican guy. I'll make fun of him,’” Sanchez surmised.

During the radio interview, Sanchez was asked about Stewart being considered a minority since he was Jewish, but balked at the suggestion.

"Very powerless people," he laughed. "He's such a minority, I mean, you know… Please, what are you kidding?…I'm telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart...the people in this country who are Jewish -- are an oppressed minority? Yeah," he said.

I find these comments completely fascinating because of how much they reveal about the psychology of affirmative action.

Consider how he defines minority--not in terms of proportion, but in terms of power. Thus Jews, who make up 1.7% of the American population, are not a minority, and in the liberal Democrat world, he's completely correct--no one hires a Jew to create diversity. You hire a Jew on merit.

Its the glaring exception to the rule that exposes the entire affirmative action enterprise as a fraud, and Sanchez's emotional reaction is entirely consistent with this paradigm. He knows he's a diversity hire, and he mightily resents it, because it says--in no uncertain terms--that he is window dressing, a token Hispanic to provide his employer with liberal bona fides.

I'm not a minority--well, at least not ethnically, but I was a 'bosses' son' which has surprisingly similar characteristics to being a diversity hire. No matter how hard you work and what you accomplish, there is always that asterisk by you name, always that qualifier that suggests that the playing field was tilted in your favor because of your relationship to the boss.

The temptation is to say--what are you complaining about? You have a good job, plenty of money--who cares what other people think?

Try it sometime. Money and security are poor substitutes for self-respect. The superficial civility of one's peers and superiors just can't seem to hide the real or imagined contemptuous sneer when you occupy a position by virtue of special privilege rather than competence and trust.

Whether a deliberate objective of affirmative action legislation or an unintended consequence, the result is the same--the elite protect their positions of power while creating an illusion of equality that no one involved actually believes in.

Sanchez has dodged accountability for what would have been career-ending mistakes on several occasions, starting with a no contest plea to a DUI in which a man was paralyzed, later succumbing to his injuries. Going from bad to worse, Sanchez then showed up in tapes revealing an improper association with an organized crime figure. Still Sanchez didn't get fired, and wasn't even suspended, instead given paid leave and the opportunity to look for another job.

Its hard to imagine any average white boy or girl, surviving these kinds of controversies in the notoriously image-conscious local news business, but Sanchez not only survived but thrived, moving to a Houston station, then to MSNBC in 2001, and more recently hired by CNN.

What set Sanchez off was that he caught Jon Stewart sneering. He might have been able to fool himself into believing that he really was making it in the big time on his merits, but no longer. Stewart was laughing at him, and the country along with him. Every self-doubt and suspicion returned in raging force. Stewart had broken the rules in which the liberal media pretends that Sanchez is just like every other anchor working at CNN, and Sanchez pretends that he's something other than the token Hispanic.

There are no heroes in this story, but CNN will continue as always, hiring the next token ethnic minority with appropriate mainstream liberal views. Sanchez on the other hand, is faced with granite reality that he's been a ruling class patsy and won't be getting a job at Fox News as a consolation prize.

Still, you won't find me echoing the contempt implicit in much of the commentary on this story, in fact, I kind of hope Sanchez gets a second (third, fourth?) act, but this time acting as a voice of warning for other ambitious members of minority groups, tempted to play three card Monte with the liberal elite.