Warning to all would-be pundits and wannabe shock jocks: drowsiness may be hazardous to your health career.
Unsuccessful Jon Stewart dissmeister Rick Sanchez turned up on Good Morning America today, ostensibly to continue his public apology tour. But in between offering up a few more mea culpas, throwing some compliments Stewart's way, randomly biting his finger (he knows he's on TV, right?) and rather crassly wedging in plugs for his book, Salso pulled a big one out of his hat, giving viewers what he claims is the "real" reason for his job-costing onair outburst.
He was just plum tuckered. And had more important things on his mind than worry about tossing around the "bigot" label during a national broadcast.
"I screwed up," he said of the Sept. 30 show. "I was tired, I'd been working 14 hour days for two-and-a-half months, I was doing three shows, I was exhausted.
"My daughter had a softball game I desperately wanted to go to, and I was a little impatient. I said some things I shouldn't have said. They were wrong. Not only were they wrong, they were offensive."
Not only were they offensive, they were career-killing. Still, in a too-little too-late confession, Sanchez admitted he had no residual beef with the Daily Show host, and in fact went on to call him "the classiest guy in the world."
Of his apologetic phone call to Stewart, Sanchez said he asked the host why he seemed to be a favored topic of satire. (Talk about a question that answers itself.)
"You're the one I like," was Stewart's response.
As for Sanchez, while he did state numerous times that his outburst was his mistake and his mistake alone, he also didn't appear to want to bear the full brunt of the blame, blaming the whole of the cable and network news landscape for not having any Hispanic, Asian or African-American lead anchors on a prime-time newscast (no matter how hard George Stephanopoulos tried to counter him).
"I was feeling a little bit put out. I externalized the problem and put it on Jon Stewart's shoulders, and I was wrong to do that," he said. "What I was feeling got in the way of what I should have done and said.
"It was my mistake, I screwed up, I take full responsibility. It was not CNN, it was Rick Sanchez."
At least until the next stop on his apology tour.