Jack Cafferty
Jack Cafferty (born 1942) is a CNN commentator and a host of the weekend financial show In The Money. In the summer of 2005, Cafferty joined The Situation Room, CNN's new weekday afternoon newscast. Cafferty formerly co-anchored CNN's weekday morning broadcast, American Morning.
Before CNN, Cafferty worked for several New York television stations. He was one of Sue Simmons' co-anchors on WNBC's Live at Five and anchored WPIX's News at Ten with Kaity Tong.
Cafferty has been described as “cranky” [1] and the network’s “house curmudgeon” [2].
In the 1970's he was anchor of the local television news in Des Moines, Iowa at the local NBC affliate, WHO channel 13, and hosted a popular segmant "Cafferty Is" whereby he would perform various tasks and occupations.
Bicycle incident
In May 2003, Cafferty allegedly ran over a bicyclist in his car and, without stopping, continued through at least two red lights. [3] He avoided possible jail time by pleading guilty to leaving the scene of the accident. [4]
Controversial remarks
Cafferty has been criticized heavily for on-air remarks, which some accused of being racist and sometimes hostile. In November 2003, he mocked the Japanese language by mimicking the speech through a series of "ching" and "chong" noises. His comments on Arabs and Muslims have since become the main focus of criticism. On September 23 2004, while discussing terrorist demands to release two female scientists from Iraqi prison, Cafferty emphatically stated “Given the way these mutants treat women in their societies, the women are probably better off in U.S. custody.” He later added, “They treat women like furniture in those countries. If I was a woman, I think I’d rather be in an American jail cell than I would be living with one of those-whatever they are over there.”
On November 17 2004, Cafferty made the following comment while discussing video footage of a United States Marine shooting an apparently un-armed and wounded Iraqi insurgent: “The Arab world is where innocent people are kidnapped, blindfolded, tied up, tortured and beheaded, and then videotape of all of this is released to the world as though they’re somehow proud of their barbarism. Somehow, I wouldn’t be too concerned about the sensitivity of the Arab world. They don’t seem to have very much.” He added: “It’s going to come down to them or us.”