In your simmering Thursday media column: Rick Sanchez pipes up again, CNBC's bizarre PR scandal, James Risen's judicial defender speaks, News Corp is flooded with lawsuits, and the WaPo's punchy editor is retired.

  • Rick Sanchez, who used to have a CNN show about Twitter before he was fired for talking about Jews, believes that cable news is a dirty, dirty business. "No matter what your skill set, someone's going to be there every single day to blast your ass." Thanks, Rick. Rick is going to have his own talk show soon.
  • This is pretty fucking remarkable: CNBC has ended its flagship "World Business" show after a blog discovered that the show's production company was also a PR firm working on behalf of Malaysian politicians. That's fairly scandalous! If only anyone here cared about Malaysia.
  • Last week, a judge denied the CIA's effort to get at the anonymous sources of NYT reporter James Risen. Now the judge's opinion has been unsealed, the money quote being "A criminal trial subpoena is not a free pass for the government to rifle through a reporter's notebook." Barack Obama will personally beat up this judge.
  • That News Corp phone hacking scandal you heard so much about is still going on! The company currently faces almost three dozen privacy invasion lawsuits, which will end up costing them tens of millions, which, in the overall context of this scandal, is a pittance. But hey, maybe one of em will get an angry judge, who knows?
  • Famed Washington Post Style section editor Henry Allen, last seen punching a dude in the newsroom, is retired. (Update: We hear he's been retired more than a year, he just happens to be in the news today. We are late on our retirement gift!) Farewell, Henry. We'll always remember the time you punched that dude.

[Photo: Getty]