CNN anchor Rick Sanchez has never been called the sharpest tool in the shed. But today's gaffe was amazing:

Sanchez isn't the first to step into that unfortunate idiom. In the late '80s, former used car salesman and troubled Arizona governor Ev Mecham was under attack as a racist. His very first act in office was to rescind the state's Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, and he had been caught calling African-American children... well... a term that rhymes with a "Nick-a-Pinny" (he claimed it was a term of endearment).

Eventually, Mecham appointed a black man to his administration, which had local reporters asking if he was just trying to quell the furor. Ev famously replied, "I don't employ them because they are black; I employ them because they're the best people who applied for the cotton-picking job."

Eventually, Mecham was impeached. It will be fun to see if the self-righteously liberal Rick Sanchez can wriggle his way out of this minefield.