Lou Dobbs, Unemployed Xenophobe

He was the finest newsman the world has ever known and now CNN has let him go. The tragedy is nearly inexpressable, but WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah gives it a good try:

What makes Lou Dobbs so special is his independence and fearlessness. Dobbs clearly set his own agenda. He had no interest in the "conventional wisdom" of his industry. Dobbs thinks like a real American newsman – a throwback to an age when journalists actually believed they were watchdogs of government and asked tough questions in the interests of the people.

When virtually his entire profession and elites in all the other political and cultural institutions of our time were making excuses for allowing tens of millions of illegal aliens to occupy our country, Lou Dobbs was alone in his focus on the issue critical to America's safety and security.

When virtually his entire profession and elites in all the other political and cultural institutions of our time were making excuses for Barack Obama's unwillingness to prove his constitutional eligibility to serve in the White House by simply showing the American people his long-form birth certificate, Lou Dobbs was alone in asking why.

That's right, Lou Dobbs was the "one reason to tune in to CNN," birther Farah tells us. Joe's a big fan, even offering Lou a job at his big pile of crazy he calls a website. "Let me be the first to say I would be proud to work with Lou Dobbs," Farah writes. "He's got his pick of assignments here at WND."





I'm sure he probably has something else in mind. But if Lou Dobbs ever wants to cover the unveiling of the Ark of the Covenant, I'm sure he'll know where to go. Some things are beneath even Lou Dobbs.

I'm guessing about that, by the way. There's no evidence to support the idea.

"Over the past six months, it's become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country and affecting all of us," Dobbs said on his final show. "And some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem solving." The evidence suggests that those "leaders in media, politics and business" were CNN president Joe Klein and the "urging" of Dobbs to go "beyond the role here at CNN" came in the form of a demand to clean out his desk.

"Months ago the president of CNN/U.S., Jonathan Klein, offered a choice to Lou Dobbs, the channel’s most outspoken anchor," New York Times reported Wednesday. "Mr. Dobbs could vent his opinions on radio and anchor an objective newscast on television, or he could leave CNN." Whether Lou quit or was canned is probably a matter of interest only to Lou, but it's clear that Lou Dobbs could only have remained at CNN if he stopped being crazy old Lou Dobbs. Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert probably put it best, when he said that Dobbs was leaving CNN to "spend more time misinforming his family."

Because, man, did Lou ever have a talent for catapulting the propaganda. There was no conspiracy theory so insane, so obviously absurd, that he wouldn't report it. In 2006, Dobbs told his audience, "There are some Mexican citizens and some Mexican- Americans who want to see California, New Mexico and other parts of the Southwestern United States given over to Mexico. These groups call it the reconquista, Spanish for reconquest. And they view the millions of Mexican illegal aliens in particular entering the United States as potentially an army of invaders to achieve that takeover."

While I don't doubt that there are Latinos who think this would be a good idea, I think there might be maybe four of five of them. As threats to national sovereignty go, this isn't one, and as movements go, it's not. Yet Dobbs went out of his way to associate the reconquista "movement" with the Mexican flag, ensuring that every time some nutjob Dobbs fan saw a Cinco de Mayo celebration, they'd think they were seeing a bunch of radicals bent on conquering a big chunk of the United States. From the transcript of that show:

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In San Diego today, another sea of Mexican flags echoing the nationalist theme in protests earlier this week.

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

ROMANS: Chants celebrating La Raza, the race, and signs proclaiming the true history of the Southwest. A Southwest they say still belongs to Mexico.

Long downplayed as a theory of the radical ethnic fringe, the la reconquista, the reconquest, the reclamation, the return, it's resonating with some on the streets. It's the idea that the Southwest United States is stolen land called Aztlan.

Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, a shameless xenophobe, helped whip up the hysteria, claiming that this was pretty much the equivalent of having al Qaeda running the bodega down the street. "And now we see that hundreds of thousands of these people, if not several million, are willing to wave the Mexican flag and not seek assimilation in the United States, but are instead declaring their allegiance to Mexico while here illegally. This can cause huge problems," he told Romans. "If only a fringe element of them want to commit acts of violence in the future to -- in order to push their claim of legitimacy in terms of their right to this area that we now occupy in the United States, it can cause great damage and loss of life in our country."

Oddly, going on four years later, the big illegal Mexican alien terrorist attack has yet to happen. But I suppose it's only a matter of time. In the meantime, they'll just have to satisfy themselves with spreading leprosy.

And that's just a sliver of what was wrong with Dobbs and his show. There's some speculation that Dobbs will follow fellow CNN-alumnus Glenn Beck over to FOX News, but it's hard to see why they'd want him -- Lou's rating's were tanking. My best guess -- and it is a guess -- is that he'll join some nonprofit organization in some way. Perhaps even one that doesn't have anything to do with the lurking Mexican Menace within our borders. Or maybe he'll just make do with his radio show.

In any case, CNN is better off without him. News is news, opinion is opinion, but Lou Dobbs was just a great big lie machine. A hatemonger, a fearmonger, a conspiracy theorist, and a fraud, he'd be a much better fit over at FOX.

But I have my doubts that even they would take him. Maybe WingNutDaily is really the best shot he has. After all, Joseph Farah obviously has a huge man-crush on him.

-Wisco


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