The Radical Wrong

[Political Waves]

Today, we'll look at the Lou Dobb's decline and fall, which is very good news for those who think news should BE news and not bloviating and misinformation, especially on CNN -- and a sampling of this weeks wingnut hijinks's, despite encouraging traction like Obama rejecting the Afghanistan projections and asking for something giving him an end-game. As well, the DoJ has finally jumped into reality and will hold trials for 9/11 terrorists in ... gasp ... New York, the scene of the crime where they should have been expedited years ago. The GOPers are just horrified by all of it and trumpeting fearspeak, but this is major movement. And as usual, we're still taking the fun-rides in Crazyland so it's hard to pull our heads out of our bums ... with a loud pop, as Fishin' Jim likes to say ... long enough to notice.

Catholic Bishops joined the Dominionist's in promoting the Coathanger Amendment that Barb Boxer has determined to eliminate and now they're upping the ante in DC by announcing that they won't continue to provide social service programs for some 68,000 souls if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law. Yeah -- that's what Jesus would do; coerce the desperate. Even the Mormons, who have some practice at "rendering unto Caesar" as regards marriage laws, took a stand for gender equity if not marriage this week. If you'd like to send a coathanger to one of the Dems who sold women out with their vote, Credo gives you an opportunity, here.

Digby and I are on the same page [below] as she asks why her taxes should be used to supply the limp with wood [at $14 or more a pop] but not for women's family planning services. Biologically, intercourse sets up the genders for very different cycles -- men have a brief window of endocrine activity while women's bodies ready for a 9-month process. If we had a male contraceptives like the pill, perhaps there would be fewer dead-beat Dad's and a happier population. But don't hold your breath --those of us that think we came here to beget and keep the Patriarch's happy don't even realize their complicity to sexual-servitude. Unless we insist on such a possibility, it won't even enter our consciousness. Consider: the Pubs that voted against Al Franken's anti-rape amendment are shocked and dismayed that the public noticed, here. Evidently in their mind ... and perhaps the 70% that think Jesus will be back to take care of all our problems real soon ... women have the right to be used and disposed of quickly and little else.

Democrat Bill Jefferson got 13 well deserved years for stashing corruption-money in his freezer but all of the GOP and various Blue Dogs continue to rake in the lobbying bucks while selling out the American people on healthcare [a 'toon], energy and corporate welfare. Goldman Sachs issued documents detailing their charity giving this week, prompting a Huffy ledeline asking, Do You Think They Donate Enough? I don't think they should be donating ANYTHING -- who are they, yer rich Aunt Sadie? They're a damned business, not a person -- they should be doing decent business as an honest broker instead of skimming multi-billions off the top to pay for bonuses while wildly speculating on our American demise.

With a lighter touch, during the healthcare debate, a Pub Congressman used a toddler as a prop for his anti-reform screed, causing the moderator to remind him not to use guests for his own purposes -- Ann Telnaes takes him down, here. And if you want to join a protest, Mark Fiori will teach you how to speak tea bag, here.

And lastly, shining softly in the darkness, here is a Must Read article about an Arkansas child [of my heart] that has refused to recite the pledge as long as there is injustice. His focus is gay rights, but it could be a myriad of other inequalities -- and because I always add the words "... one of these days" after the "liberty and justice for all" line, I know the looks and head-wags I get from startled adults. Difficult to contemplate the flak he's getting from schoolmates. The kid's courage gives us a lesson in citizenship. You can hear his statement on an included YouTube.

There are a few fun and/or interesting reads first; then as bonus, the Lou Chronicles. When Dobb's decided he wasn't sure if Obama had a valid birth certificate, his number was up as a legit newscaster; he'd already pushed the envelope with his insistence that illegals were spreading leprosy into the Beloved Country and his steady march out of Libertarian territory and into the Advanced Wingnut stronghold. It's been a predictable slide since, with the grassroots and the Latinos crossing the final T in OUT! We seem to have finally gotten this right -- go after the networks and the sponsors and let the liars dangle in the wind. If you want to check out the activism that put more than 100,000 of us on Lou's trail, it's here.

The sad part is that even if Lou is a bit of a Huffinpuff, he was a decent commentator for years before getting 9/11 fever. There were rumors of a presidential run last season, so I expect we'll hear more from him prior to 2012. He and Palin would make a nice, delusional duo but he's too egocentric to play 2nd banana and she's too witless to figure out that cult of personality won't put her in the Oval Office.

Weekend reads and excellent links today.

Jude


Interview With the Alien (or, "The Wrath of Stupak")
Richard Eskow, NightLight
November 13, 2009
http://nightlight.typepad.com/nightlight/2009/11/interview-with-the-alien-or-the-wrath-of-stupak.html

The place: A quiet stretch of road, illuminated by a single beam from a shining object hovering 100 yeards off the ground. Two shadowy figures stand in the harsh light: A gray-bodied alien with tentacle-like fingers. And me.

Me: Thank you for allowing me to interview you.

Alien: Actually it is I who am interviewing you. Is this translating device functional? I mean ... (tap tap) Is this thing on?

Me: Yes.

Alien: I was monitoring your video screens this morning and observed much conflict in your Hall of Wise Legislative Councilors.

Me: You better tap that thing again.

Alien: I mean,"Congress." Is that a more accurate translation?

Me: Yes.

Alien: Specifically, I was attempting to understand your "Stupak Amendment." Motivations on this planet are often difficult to discern, but this individual's behavior seems comprehensible to us. Clearly this ... "Stupak" ... whose name is so like the ones on my planet ... has a strong wish to reproduce.

Me: No, I don't think that's it. His idea would not affect people like him, only lower-income people.

Alien: "Lower income" ... So, he desires a planet which is more heavily populated by persons with less financial resources than himself?

Me: I'm pretty sure that's not his motivation.

Alien: I have heard the term "pro-life." But those who use this term often support measures that result in the death of fully-formed humans, especially those of "lower income." Why are they dedicated to preserving what they see as life in pre-birth form, but not in post-birth form?

Me: That inconsistency has been noted elsewhere.

Alien: Perhaps this ... Stupak ... wishes people who lack financial resources to engage in sexual activity with less frequency than other humans.

Me: That might be part of it. But if you keep pronouncing his name that way, people will say that you are culturally insensitive. Guys like Bart Stupak and me put up with a lot of grief over our last names back in grade school, especially from snobby WASPS.

Alien: Wasps? I did not know your insects were sentient. But why were they "snobby" during your larval stage?

Me: They sometimes feel superior to those of us who have ethnic names.

Alien: You are Ethnic? From Ethnicus IV? With your name, I assumed you were from the Rigelian Sector.

Me: Some might think so.

Alien: This ... Stupak ... he wishes "lower-income" beings to live in a state of non-sexuality?

Me: They can have sex ... if they're married.

Alien: So people with fewer financial resources would be required to exchange exclusivity vows before engaging in sexual activity? Interesting. And then they would be required to reproduce involuntarily should they enjoy the ... what is it you call it? ... the "Act of Congress."

Me: Well, it's not the same "congress" as -

Alien: Is this Stupak ...troubled by the method of reproduction employed by humans? This thing called "sexuality"?

Me: Some people certainly think so.

Alien: It is also striking to us that the subset of humans known as "men" exerts such control over the physical bodies of that other subset known as "women." It is very reminiscent of the colonization and enslavement protocols we have seen imposed when one planet conquers another. Could "men" and "women" have originated on different worlds?

Me: They say that "men are from Mars and women are from Venus" -

Alien: Ridiculous! We have visited both planets, and neither is hospitable to humans. But it is curious to see one half of a species dominate another, merely because of the role each plays in the process of reproduction. Your planet is, how shall I say it? (tap tap) - really weird.

Me: Now you're catching on. You're beginning to think like we do.

Alien: That is a disturbing idea. Perhaps it is best if we leave before it is too late. ++


An Immoderate Proposal
digby, Hullabaloo
11/11/2009
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/immoderate-proposal-by-digby-i-have.html

I have a moral objection to paying for any kind of erectile dysfunction medicine in the new health reform bill and I think men who want to use it should just pay for it out of pocket. After all, I won't ever need such a pill. And anyway, it's no biggie. Just because most of them can get it under their insurance today doesn't mean they shouldn't have it stripped from their coverage in the future because of my moral objections. (I don't think there's even been a Supreme Court ruling making wood a constitutional right. I might be wrong about that.)

Many of the men who are prescribed this medication are on Medicare, so I think it should be stripped out of that coverage as well. And unlike the payments for abortion, which actually lower overall medical costs (pregnancy obviously costs much, much more) banning tax dollars from covering any kind of Viagra would result in a substantial savings:

The price of Pfizer’s Viagra has doubledsince it was launched, according to a list of wholesale acquisition costs paid by pharmacies, obtained by BNET. In May 1999, a 100-count bottle of the blue diamonds cost $700. Today, that same bottle costs $1,457.61, a 108 percent increase, according to the list: [open link for chart]

The blog of online pharmacy AccessRx notes that Pfizer has also been extracting more frequent price rises in addition to higher price rises:

… we’re not sure if you’ve been tracking price increases recently, but Pfizer began to raise the cost of Viagra twice a year instead of once a year in 2007. Including the last six price increases since Jan. 1, 2007, the price of Viagra has gone up 45.5%.

The WAC list indicates that while Pfizer was initially content to take price increases of 3 percent per year, in 2003 it doubled that increase. In January 2009, Pfizer bumped it up to 11 percent. Then in August it took another 5 percent.

It’s an astonishing example of pricing power, given that Viagra is in direct competition with Eli Lilly’s Cialis and Bayer’s Levitra. The heat from Cialis is particularly severe: Cialis sales in the U.S. were up 16 percent to $149.4 million in Q2; Pfizer’s Viagra was up only 4 percent at $207 million.

I don't want my tax dollars touching even one milimeter of that overly engorged expense.

I realize that many people disagree with my moral objections to men getting erections which God clearly doesn't want them to get, but my principles on this are more important to me than theirs are to them. So too bad. If you want a boner, pay for it yourself.

And I think those noxious advertisements for the drugs should be banned as well, if only for aesthetic reasons. Having to watch my baby boomer fellows wail "Viva Viagra" is offensive to anyone who has any taste in music. ++


Hersh: Obama finally ‘taking control’ on Afghanistan
David Edwards and Muriel Kane, Raw Story
Thursday, November 12th, 2009
http://rawstory.com/2009/11/hersh-obama-afghanistan/

In the wake of an AP report on Wednesday that President Barack Obama is not satisfied with any of the options on Afghanistan he has received from his national security team and is demanding revisions, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow turned to veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh for insight.

"It could be huge," Hersh told Maddow, "simply that the president's finally saying, 'I'm taking control.'"

"The one thing that mystified a lot of people," Hersh explained, "was the decision to let General McChrystal write a report. There's no general in history that will come back, given that assignment, and say 'We can't win.'"

"This is basically a war, at best, that's going to be a stalemate," continued Hersh. "And so Obama is just putting his foot down, and that's great. ... He's grabbing it and he hasn't been grabbing it until now."

Hersh also commented on a New York Times story which revealed that the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, former Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, had cabled Washington last week to express "his reservations about deploying additional troops to the country," thereby putting himself "in stark opposition to the current American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who has asked for 40,000 more troops."

Hersh described Eikenberry's cable as "big news," especially because Eikenberry has been one of a group of generals -- which also includes McChrystal, Petraeus, and Odierno -- who graduated from West Point around 1973-75 and have stuck together over the years as what is seen by other military leaders as a "West Point Mafia."

According to Hersh, this has caused "a lot of trauma within the Army, which is very resentful. ... The top of the Army ... they've been very unhappy with the McChrystal appointment and the way things have been going."

That is why Hersh sees it as significant that Eikenberry is now steering an independent course. "This summer inside the embassy," he told Maddow, "there was a lot of concerns about the stability -- literally the mental stability -- of Karzai. And I think Eikenberry probably knows more than most people."

"Eikenberry is simply, I think, reflecting a huge split," Hersh concluded, "because he's now splitting from the McChrystal counter-insurgency wing that's been dominated by Petraeus."

Hersh called his conclusion about Eikenberry a "heuristic guess," but it is supported by one online analysis which tracks Eikenberry's statements since 2007 and suggests that "General McChrystal is on a special mission based a specific philosophy of warfare and that General Eikenberry is performing his duty according to his current assignment with an ongoing evaluation of the various players and facts at hand."

"General Eikenberry is both a soldier and scholar of history and political science," this analysis concludes. "He knows the history of occupations that fail to deliver for the populace and he's telling us right now that the U.S. can't succeed with more military forces in a nation run by an illegitimate president who has been exposed for election fraud. More troops are not the solution."

[Open link for] This video from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Nov. 11, 2009. ++


The Simplest Justification for a Public Option
Ostoy Report
Thursday, November 12, 2009
http://www.ostroyreport.com/2009/11/simplest-justification-for-healthcare.html

Though not the least bit surprising, Republicans have been manipulating the current health-care debate with incessant partisan posturing, lies and deception and endless anti-Obama/liberal propaganda. But consider the following very simple case for a truly meaningful public option:

-Americans expect and receive government-provided free education: Democracy

-Americans expect and receive government-provided free police protection: Democracy

-Americans expect and receive government-provided free fire protection: Democracy

-Americans expect and receive government-provided free sanitation: Democracy

-Americans expect and receive government-provided free libraries: Democracy

-Americans expect and receive government-provided free criminal defense: Democracy

-Americans expect and receive government provided free food stamps/welfare: Democracy

-American veterans expect and receive government-provided healthcare: Democracy

-If average Americans were to receive government-provided health care: SOCIALISM!!??

What's wrong with this picture? Need I say more... ++


bonus
 
 
Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart bid farewell to the man, the legend, and the award-winning xenophobe: Lou Dobbs.
Ben Craw, Talking Points Memo

November 13, 2009
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/stewart-and-colbert-say-goodbye-to-dobbs-in-their-own-special-ways.php

 
 
Did Dobbs Leave CNN Because Of President Obama?
Evan McMorris-Santoro, TPM

November 12, 2009
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/did-dobbs-leave-cnn-because-of-president-obama.php

 
For a while now, the rumor mill has said Lou Dobbs would be headed to Fox if he ever left his longtime home at CNN. Dobbs hasn't given any hints of where he's headed in the day after he signed off his CNN show for the last time, but in an interview he conducted several weeks ago, he was already sounding like a Fox News personality.

Speaking with GQ in October, Dobbs said he had been personally targeted by the Obama administration and its allies in Washington and even suggested that the White House had requested his ouster. From the interview:

GQ: That was my next question. Have you heard from the administration?

[Lou Dobbs]: Of course I have. Sure. Without question. They are coordinating with a number of groups, including the Center for American Progress. The usual suspects. To carry out constant and absolutely insidious and sordid attacks on me. And the reason they're doing so, I'm the leading independent voice, and I am critical on their policies and intent, on unconditional amnesty, and leaving the borders and ports unsecure. They cannot, they're. . .

GQ: They're afraid of that point of view? They don't think their point of view will carry against...

LD: Apparently not. Otherwise why would you do such a thing? But I will not be intimidated, and I understand that. Therefore they're trying to intimidate my network and my owners. ++
 

Earth to Lou: It Could Have Been Different
Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center - http://www.splcenter.org/blog
November 12, 2009
http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=101210

It didn’t have to end this way for Lou Dobbs. He could have been a contender.

But Dobbs, a supremely self-confident man who often mentions his Harvard education in private conversation, just wouldn’t listen. Time after time, as the “Lou Dobbs Tonight” show he has hosted on CNN since 2003 grew more rabidly critical of undocumented immigrants, he was warned of the kind of people he was putting on his show. He was told that many of the [1] “facts” he was presenting just weren’t so. At first, he was gently called out for his defamations of Latino immigrants, then, as his tone grew sharper still, he was subjected to all kinds of public criticism from human rights groups, the journalism trade press, even a leading New York Times financial columnist. Instead of righting his course, or even slightly moderating his tone, Dobbs called his critics “commies” and “fascists.” He fudged facts, defended earlier falsehoods, and promoted racist conspiracy theories. He fumed.

It all ended last night, when Dobbs [2] announced on his program that he was resigning from CNN effective immediately. In a moment of supreme irony, he complained that public political debate was now overtaken with “partisanship and ideology,” and promised to use “the most honest and direct language possible” in whatever future role he plays in public life. For once, he did not attack his critics.

My colleagues at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and I were some of those critics, and early ones at that. I began speaking to Lou Dobbs in 2004, not many months after he started airing virtually nightly segments entitled “Broken Borders.” By that time, he had [3] already run “reports” complaining about “illegal aliens” getting free medical care, educating their children in public schools, committing sex crimes, getting breaks on college tuition, filling the prisons and spreading diseases.

To my surprise, Dobbs answered my very first call immediately. He was interested in what I had to say, he said, and responded to my warning that an upcoming guest had ties to white supremacy by canceling the appearance. He asked that I keep him apprised of any similar situations. He said he was all in favor of multiculturalism.

That kind of back-and-forth culminated in Dobbs sending a five-person team from his show to the Montgomery, Ala., headquarters of the SPLC, in November 2004, after we contacted Dobbs about a guest who promoted the [4] “Aztlan” conspiracy theory alleging a Mexican plot to “reconquer” the American Southwest. After much of our staff and I spent most of the day briefing Dobbs’ people, they left saying that Dobbs planned a three-part series on extremism in America, and another on racism within the immigration restriction movement. And for a short time, Dobbs seemed open to hearing our criticisms and warnings. But that all came to end on his July 29, 2005, show, when he erupted over an SPLC report exposing racist elements in the Minuteman vigilante movement. Dobbs called us “despicable” and “reprehensible,” although he did not dispute any of the facts we reported.

From there, things went south. That winter, we ran a [5] story detailing members of extremist groups who Dobbs had put on his show. A few months later, we pointed out that in discussing the Aztlan conspiracy on the air, Dobbs used a map of the area Mexico supposedly coveted, [6] explicitly attributed to the Council of Conservative Citizens — a group that has described black people as “a retrograde species of humanity.” Then, on March 6, 2007, I was quoted on NPR saying that Dobbs was helping to mainstream conspiracy theories and propaganda that originated in white supremacist hate groups. Enraged, Dobbs called me a few days later to say that the SPLC and I had no integrity, and that, henceforth, we would be “adversaries.” A couple of weeks later, I went on Dobbs’ show to point out that [7] Chris Simcox — the original founder of the Minuteman movement and a guest Dobbs had had on his air at least 17 times at that point — had told his followers that he had personally seen Chinese Red Army troops maneuvering on the U.S./Mexican border in preparation for an invasion. Dobbs seemed to find that funny, but he didn’t repudiate Simcox.

Then, on May 6, 2007, I was quoted in a “60 Minutes” profile of Dobbs. CBS’ Lesley Stahl pointed out in the piece that Dobbs had claimed in 2005 that “an invasion of illegal aliens” was “threatening the health of many Americans” and followed that up with a report claiming that 7,000 new cases of leprosy had been identified in America in the prior three years. (The truth is that there were about 400 new cases in the years in question, that leprosy is now an easily treatable disease, and that no one knew what role immigrants may have had in any leprosy case.) I criticized Dobbs’ “journalism” in the piece, which sent Dobbs into a rage the next day on his own CNN show. He said he stood “100%” behind his bogus report, and he had his reporter re-identify the source of her allegations — a [8] right-wing fanatic named Madeleine Cosman, who the SPLC had earlier documented telling an audience that “most” Latino immigrant men “molest girls under 12, although some specialize in boys and some in nuns.” Cosman had no expertise in immigration or medicine.

The last time I was on Dobbs’ show was on May 16 of that year, along with my boss, SPLC President Richard Cohen. (Our appearance followed by a day the printing of SPLC ads in The New York Times and USA Today calling on CNN President Jonathan Klein to retract Dobbs’ false leprosy claim, as Dobbs himself refused to do so.) Our interview was preceded by a setup piece containing a completely new set of claims about leprosy. Now, Dobbs claimed that new cases of leprosy had “risen” to 166 in 2005. Nothing was said about the supposed 7,000 cases, and Dobbs never conceded any error at all. The mail we got after the show from Dobbs’ supporters was memorable. “You people disgust me and I hope you burn in Hell,” wrote one. “In memory of your appearance on Lou Dobbs, I will make a GENEROUS donation to a well known hate group in YOUR NAME.” Another put it like this: “You can shove tolerance up your ass as far as possible. Hate is alive and growing!” And a third wrote to regret that cowboy days were over, otherwise “you and your associates would be hanging by a rope.”

We fared a little better with The New York Times, where David Leonhardt wrote a long column concluding that “Mr. Dobbs has a somewhat flexible relationship with reality.” Around the same time, the Columbia Journalism Review wrote that Dobbs was “tamper[ing] with facts” and “pretending the confusion was someone else’s fault.” Dobbs’ response to all of this was to attack SPLC and the Times, informing his CNN audience that he would tell them “who’s really telling the truth and who the commies are and who the fascists are who have the temerity to attack me.”

In the years since, SPLC has regularly written about Dobbs, documenting the real truth about his various claims and pointing out his role in poisoning the debate about immigration in the United States. Our point was never to stop a robust debate about immigration — quite the contrary, we were all in favor of such a debate, but felt that it should be based on facts, not racist propaganda or conspiracy theories. Finally, in late July of this year, after Dobbs seemed to suggest that President Obama was not a U.S. citizen, SPLC President Cohen wrote CNN’s Jonathan Klein [9] to ask that Dobbs be fired. “Respectable news organizations should not employ reporters willing to peddle racist conspiracy theories and false propaganda,” Cohen wrote. “It’s time for CNN to remove Mr. Dobbs from the airwaves.” The letter set off a chorus of similar demands from other human rights groups, and a movement by many of them to press that demand grew quickly. It concluded yesterday with Dobbs’ departure.

Did it have to happen this way? Obviously not. But Dobbs never could hear anyone whose opinions varied from his own. When he was confronted by Stahl in the “60 Minutes” piece about his leprosy error, Dobbs’ response was typical. “Well, I can tell you this,” he told Stahl. “If we reported it, it’s a fact.”

Stahl replied, “You can’t tell me that. You did report it.”

Dobbs: “Well, no, I just did.”

Stahl: “How can you guarantee that to me?”

And then, this gem from Dobbs: “Because I’m the managing editor, and that’s the way we do business. We don’t make up numbers, Lesley, do we?”

As it turns out, he did. No longer, however, at CNN, “The Most Trusted in Name in News.” Not any more. But it didn’t have to be this way. ++


Lou Dobbs, Immigrant-Bashing Host, Eyes Next Move
FAIR via CommonDreams
Thursday, November 12, 2009 
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/12-12

 
TV host Lou Dobbs abruptly quit his CNN program yesterday, bringing a sudden end to a television program most notable for its remarkably one-sided presentation of immigration issues.
 
Since 2003, Dobbs has regularly used his CNN platform to issue misleading and alarmist warnings about the threats posed by undocumented immigrants. Dobbs has spoken of an "army of invaders" scheming to reannex parts of the southwestern U.S. to Mexico (3/31/06), claimed that "illegal alien smugglers and drug traffickers are on the verge of ruining some of our national treasures" (11/19/03) and declared that "the invasion of illegal aliens is threatening the health of many Americans" (4/14/05).
 
Repeated segments on Dobbs' show were devoted to "illegal aliens" getting free medical care (10/1/03), putting their children in schools (10/2/03), committing sex crimes (10/30/03), getting breaks on college tuition (10/22/03), clogging up the federal prison system (11/4/03) and "flooding across our borders in some cases carrying dangerous diseases" (11/20/03). More recently, Dobbs (3/9/09) promoted a misleading report that suggested hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants would get jobs due to the government stimulus program.
 
Indeed, he seemed almost eager to misrepresent statistics in order to further his anti-immigrant agenda. Dobbs was famously challenged by CBS host Lesley Stahl (5/6/07) about his erroneous suggestion (4/14/05) that immigrants were causing an alarming increase in leprosy in the United States. Dobbs' remarkable response--"If we reported it, it's a fact"--was just as incorrect as his original reporting (which, it turned out, was based on inaccurate numbers peddled by a far-right anti-immigrant activist--FAIR Action Alert, 5/11/07).
 
While that incident received significant attention, it was certainly not the only time Dobbs' program misrepresented reality. FAIR's magazine Extra! (1-2/04) noted that Dobbs distorted a study of the costs and benefits of immigration, turning the study's finding of a small economic benefit into a multi-billion dollar cost to the nation's economy. Dobbs also inflated the proportion of the prison population believed to be undocumented immigrants (New York Times, 5/30/07) and recently garbled a CNN poll on immigration to argue that "most" Americans "want illegal immigrants now in the country to leave" (10/22/09; FAIR Blog, 10/23/09).
 
The show was a regular platform for a variety of anti-immigration advocacy groups. Dobbs (5/23/06) even went so far as to use an on-screen graphic from the white supremacist Council of Concerned Citizens in a report fanning fears about Mexican plans to invade the Southwest (Huffington Post, 5/24/06). Dobbs did not leave the overheated rhetoric to his guests, though. Before a Republican presidential debate (11/28/07), he called immigration advocates "misguided abject fools" who are "working to subvert the will of the majority of the people of this country."
 
Responding to a reporter's comment about how the governor of Arizona "supports comprehensive immigration reform, including a guest worker program," Dobbs responded (4/19/06): "All I can say to that is lah-dee-dah. The idea that the governor has taken such a superior view over the poor, humble residents of her state, is there any kind of--is there any way in which they might turn out at the polls to express their grievances?" Environmental groups opposed to building a border fence between the U.S. and Mexico were "complete idiots" (5/19/08). Immigrants' rights protests were regularly derided (5/1/08): "They ignore the fundamental values of the nation and demand an end to the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. We'll have complete coverage of this travesty."
 
Such language is unsurprising, since there was never any pretense of balance to Dobbs' show. As he put it to CNN host Howard Kurtz (4/2/06): "I'm not interested--are you interested in six or seven views, or are you interested in the truth? Because that's what I'm interested in; that's what my viewers are interested in." Declining to present contrasting views because they conflict with one's own definition of "truth" is not exactly the approach they teach in journalism school, of course. As reported by Daphne Eviatar in the Nation (8/28/06), some CNN reporters were concerned by the show's techniques: Another former CNN news staffer from an overseas bureau said (also on condition of anonymity) that whenever Dobbs' producers contacted the bureau for stories, "they would request stories that would fit their agenda.... We wanted to provide a balanced view. But people on Dobbs' show would look at the script and ask for changes. If we gave too much of a balanced view, they would kill the story." Former senior staffers said that Dobbs would search out stories that supported his anti-immigrant agenda. As one put it, "He's assembled correspondents who feel beholden to him. They are given the line on the story and told how to assemble it in his partisan manner before they're sent out to do the story."
 
One of Dobbs' standard defenses over the years has been that his concern is illegal immigration, not legal immigration. But Dobbs' show blurred that distinction a number of times. Dobbs introduced one report (11/4/03) about "illegal aliens, those noncitizens taking up a third of the cells in our federal penitentiaries." The ensuing report noted that there was no way of knowing how many prisoners were actually illegal.
 
In 2003, Dobbs (9/23/03) expressed outrage over a group of immigrants' rights activists: "People who have not respected immigration laws in this country are now demanding equal treatment under the law." A week later (9/30/03), Dobbs acknowledged that the activists he was criticizing were not, in fact, lawbreakers. In 2008, Dobbs (1/16/08) attacked the campaign activities of one Nevada union, complaining that "as many as half of the union's members are illegal aliens." Actually, the union had reported that about half of its members were immigrants.
 
It should be noted that Dobbs' troubling record of distortion is not limited to immigration. He has featured one-sided discussions on climate change (12/18/08, 1/5/09) and issued nonsensical complaints about the White House economic stimulus plan (Extra!, 4/09). Dobbs was one of many figures in the corporate media to cheer a premature Iraq War victory ("Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success, especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab reporters"--4/14/03), and most recently caused a stir (Associated Press, 8/3/09) by giving airtime to "birther" guests to advance the discredited notion that Barack Obama is not actually a U.S. citizen.
 
In his final CNN broadcast (11/12/09), Dobbs suggested that he would continue in the public arena in some fashion: "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 as well as to contribute positively to a better understanding of the great issues of our day." Dobbs also alluded to "the lack of true representation in Washington, D.C."
 
Dobbs' propagandistic approach to journalism was an embarrassment that CNN seemed more than willing to tolerate as long as his ratings were high (Extra!, 5-6/06); with much of the cultural anxiety formerly going into the anti-immigration movement now focused on the Tea Party movement associated with Glenn Beck, Dobbs' viewership has been in a prolonged slump (New York Observer, 7/30/09), so it's not too surprising to find him looking for a new home. CNN president Jonathan Klein once told the New York Times (3/29/06): "Lou's show is not a harbinger of things to come at CNN. He is sui generis, one of a kind." One can only hope. ++
 
FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986.
 
 
Lou Dobbs and Leprosy
Common Dreams
Jun 6, 2007
www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/06/1692 

 
 
Lou Dobbs' Dubious Guest List
Common Dreams
Jul 1, 2006
www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0701-08.htm

 
"I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington ... I'm asking you to believe in yours."
~ Barack Obama

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