Dobbs, CNN Part

(Cliché alert.)

Some in the left blogosphere are having a field day with the resignation (video below) of Lou Dobbs from CNN.

Under the headline “CNN”s on-air racist, Lou Dobbs, is gone after tonight’s show,” says “the hater is quitting.” “Thers” on Firedoglake sarcastically rants “Given the Harsh Discrimination the Liberal Media inflicts upon angry old paranoid white guys who yell a lot and get stuff wrong, it’s amazing that Dobbs even had a teevee show in the first place.” (I couldn't help but respond.)

Arguably most significant, however, was the glee expressed by Media Matters. President Eric Burns issued this statement:

For too long, CNN provided Lou Dobbs with its stamp of approval as he pursued a dangerous, one-sided and all too often false conspiracy tinged crusade against immigrants. This is a happy day for all those who care about this nation of immigrants and believe in the power of media to elevate the political discourse.

Media Matters, a very credible blog generally strong on research, trivializes the wide-ranging commentary,some of it conservative and some not, by implying that it all amounted to a “false conspiracy tinged crusade against immigrants.” There once was a time that liberal organizations cared about unfair trade practices destroying American jobs- another of Dobbs obsessions- but, alas, that interest now seems a thing of the past.

More significant, however, is MM’s assertion of "a happy day for all those who…. Believe in the power of media to elevate the political discourse.” Presumably, this means “the power of the media to elevate the political discourse” harmed by Lou Dobbs, suggesting, not unreasonably, that media liberals/progressives/leftitsts played a primary role in unseating the anchorman. Writing today in The Washington Post, media critic Howard Kurtz noted

Liberal groups such as NDN and Media Matters had mounted a "Dump Dobbs" campaign, and Latino organizations challenged such Dobbs declarations as his 2006 statement that about one-third of the U.S. prison population "is estimated to be illegal aliens"--which the anchor later acknowledged was way too high. ( Included was) The Southern Poverty Law Center (which) asked CNN in July to fire Dobbs over what it called his "racist conspiracy theories."

And Media Matters referred to its

leading role in the Drop Dobbs Coalition (DropDobbs.com) which was launched to call attention to Dobbs' incendiary hate speech and falsehoods, which advertisers were supporting through their sponsorship of his nightly CNN program. The Coalition includes numerous national civil rights and other groups concerned about the kind of hate promoted daily by Dobbs on his television and radio programs. In addition to Media Matters in partnership with NDN, the coalition, representing over two million people, includes the National Council of La Raza, LULAC, National Hispanic Media Coalition, America's Voice, The Hispanic Institute, Southern Poverty Law Center, Netroots Nation, Voto Latino, LCLAA, Center for New Community, Reform Immigration for America, the Dolores Huerta Foundation, the National Puerto Rican Coalition and GALEO.

We’ve been down this road before. Such as in September, when the Los Angeles explained

Responding to a firestorm that raged on conservative talk shows and websites, the White House on Sunday announced the resignation of a top environmental advisor who had made fiery remarks about Republicans and signed a petition questioning whether the U.S. government had any role in planning the Sept. 11 attacks.

Van Jones, a prominent Oakland community activist, issued a statement decrying "lies and distortions" and a "smear campaign" that had been waged against him by the right.

Recently, we have this, again reported by the LA Times (which claims that the subject had joined the administration on the condition that she would stay only a few months):

In an expected development, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn is stepping down after a brief tenure marked by a dust-up with Fox News Channel over its coverage....

Last month, she told CNN that Fox was "part of the Republican Party." She said that the network's practice was to take the party's "talking points and put them on the air. Take their opposition research and put them on the air -- and that's fine. But let's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is."

That touched off a small-screen feud. A Fox talk show host, Glenn Beck, aired footage of Dunn addressing a high school graduation ceremony in June and describing Mao Tse-tung and Mother Teresa as two of her "favorite political philosophers."

Beck said on his show: "The guy responsible for more deaths than any other 20th century leader is her favorite philosopher!"

Not to be outdone by Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and the others on the right intolerant of anyone they disagree with, some liberal organizations appear, at least, to have effected the release from his contract of the man they loved to hate, Lou Dobbs. Not Limbaugh, Hannity, or Beck, for whom accuracy, detail, and dialogue are as unwanted as swine flu, and whose primary goal (in the case of the first two) is to return the Republican Party to power. No, the scalp was to be that of Lou Dobbs, who wants no part of the Republican Party and whom conservatives view with wariness. Congratulations.

They're Criticizing Lou Dobbs

On Tuesday's Countdown, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann was, understandably, a little proud of himself when he identified John Stossel as one of his "Best Persons In The World"

for his best responsible comment from a guy I bash now, John Stossel, now Fox News. He says he won‘t vote Republican if “conservative means stop all immigration and some other things that conservatives say. If it means the Lou Dobbs kind of rants about immigrants wrecking America, I don‘t subscribe to that. I think immigrants, by and large, do good things for America.”

I don‘t think Mr. Stossel cares what I think. But I think he deserves applause for that.

Olbermann ‘s applause was echoed by thinkprogress.org, the blog of the Center for American Progress , albeit primarily by way of an attack on Dobbs. Welcoming Stossel to GOP TV, Glenn Beck on his radio show on Wednesday discussed (audio below) immigration with him:

STOSSEL: But if it means the Lou Dobbs kind of rants about immigrants wrecking America, I don't subscribe to that. I think immigrants by and large do good things for America.

GLENN: I think immigrants I think we need more immigrants, ones that want to be Americans because those immigrants are the only ones that are reminding us that we better get off our ass, we've got liberty here and we forget about it all the time.

STOSSEL: That's very true. When they were passing all these antismoking rules and I wanted to make the argument that, gee, don't we have freedom of association? Can't the guy who smokes who owns a bar have smoking in his bar? Can't the smokers have some bars? And I went on the street and I asked smoker after smoker, what do you think? Oh, okay, I guess we're just going to have to stand outside. Nobody was outraged except the immigrants. And they would say, I thought America was the land of the free. So you make a good point there.

If we are to believe Stossel, immigrants are good for the U.S.A. because they’re the only people who support unrestricted smoking in public. It skillfully combines two bad arguments: uninhibited smoking, anywhere and everywhere, is really good policy; and immigrants are good because they understand this.

It’s unsurprising that the former ABC correspondent would advance this spurious argument for supporting immigration, apparently of both the legal and illegal variety. It would be a little more jarring to hear the conservative libertarian Stossel ‘fess up: “I support increased immigration because it expands the labor pool and exerts downward pressure on wages and benefits.”

Such candor would not be very sophisticated. But harboring little respect for the American worker fits neatly into the worldview of someone with little respect also for American schoolchildren. And it would hardly disturb corporate interests, which always have been paramount in Stossel’s thinking and commentary, disguised as reporting.

Dobbs has been wrong frequently the past year (especially on ACORN), owing partly to his avid distaste for Barack Obama. Still, on the matter of legal/illegal immigration, his signature issue, he has been largely correct, as when he told an interviewer at his network in 2007

we bring in more than two million immigrants into this country lawfully each and every year? Has anybody on this broadcast, any news organization in the country, said, wait a minute, why in the world are we worrying about illegal immigration into this country and their -- and their situation, before we're worrying about how long it takes to become a lawful immigrant in to this country and what we're doing with people who are playing by the rules? This is upside down. It's wrongheaded.

Often blasted as anti-immigrant and even racist, Dobbs here is urging greater attention to effecting the citizenship of legal immigrants, shortening the time between entrance to the country and full status as Americans. This remains one of the best ways to ensure full rights and privileges for all individuals here legally, advantaging both those who have decided to do it the right way and America.

Where's John McCain?

By way of STLtoday.com comes an article this week on the largest takeover bid ever in the beer industry. Jeremiah McWilliams reports

InBev of Belgium has launched an unsolicited bid to take over St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch Cos., the brewer of Budweiser and the country's biggest beer maker. The $46.3 billion bid — amounting to $65 per share, in cash — would transform the industry, creating a global brewing behemoth selling about one-fourth of the world's beer.

Apparently, Missouri politicians, including Governor Matt Blunt and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, are not amused, unsurprising given the probable impact on the metropolitan region.

Neither is Lou Dobbs. On the 7/7/08 edition of "Lou Dobbs Tonight," Dobbs noted, following a report by CNN correspondent Carrie Lee, "the madness created by free trade and the millions of jobs that have been lost. I hate what they call free trade. I prefer desperately fair trade." Lee's report included video of Senator Barack Obama commenting

I don't think that we can pass a law to prevent Budweiser's shareholders, Anheuser- Busch's shareholders from selling their company. That's part of the free market system. I do think it would be a shame if Bud is foreign owned.

Like most of Obama's relevant remarks these days, that's bland and inoffensive. However, it would be fascinating to hear a reporter, any reporter, asking John McCain his opinion of the takeover attempt. As Lee explained:

And that's the interesting thing. We hear from Obama and not a peep out of McCain. Keep in mind that his wife, of course, a very large shareholder in Bud stock, also owns a distributorship. He's been a free trade advocate. He also has some financial gain and he also has the tradition of patriotism, though, to contend with as well. So a little bit of a tough fight to be with.

That's right. McCain can support the causes of patriotism and of American workers- or of free trade and Cindy McCain's enormous fortune. It's his choice- if someone dares ask him about it.

Quote Of The Week

"There are responsibilities for government and this is certainly one of them."

Lou Dobbs on "Lou Dobbs Tonight," 7/7/08, on (inadequate) Food and Drug Administration inspections of tomato fields in light of the salmonella problem

Pointing A Finger

What is it with Barack Obama and fund-raisers? It was at a fund-raiser in April that Senator Obama spoke these legendary words:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

And now at a fund-raiser in Florida on May 22, 2008 the near-certain Democratic presidential nominee said:

A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia. There’s a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year. If you have people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it’s not surprising that would happen.

Now, putting Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh in the same phrase is bad enough, given that they disagree about trade, outsourcing, minimum wage, corporate regulation, education, taxation, affirmative action, gay rights (which Dobbs considers a diversionary issue), abortion (ditto), campaign finance reform, mainland China, health care, Iraq (on which Dobbs' views are a little hard to discern), the Bush presidency, and other issues I can't think of presently.

But the real problem is this: the people responsible for hate crimes against Hispanics are the people who have committed hate crimes against Hispanics. They are the people who should be held accountable and who should be prosecuted. Liberals are often, largely unjustifiably, accused of denigrating the concept of individual responsibility. It would not only be good policy, but good politics, for the nominee (presumably Obama) of America's liberal party to demand that individuals who commit criminal offenses- including hate crimes- face the consequences of their actions. That's a better argument than excusing their behavior because a talk show host or newscaster/advocacy journalist opposes illegal immigration.

The King Memorial

Washington Post Metro columnist Marc Fisher in his column of May 11, 2008 draws our attention to a nearly-forgotten matter, the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial and its centerpiece, the Stone of Hope.

The 28-foot statue is to be displayed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It is being carved in mainland China with quarry from the tyrannical Communist nation under the aegis of the King Memorial Foundation, an arrangement pleasing to its president, Harry Johnson. But while King was alive, the Chinese government referred to him as "a revolutionary running dog" because he advocated nonviolent protest. Fisher cogently argues that the memorial should "be designed and executed by those who live in the country that King so inspired and changed."

Unfortunately, the columnist maintains also "so far, opposition to outsourcing the sculpture has come mainly from African Americans and the U.S. granite industry." Mainly, yes, but not completely. This is from a portion of a segment, which included a resport by CNN correspondent Lou Tucker, on the May 3, 2008 edition of Lou Dobbs Tonight:

The last monument to be built on the Mall was the World War II memorial. That memorial, which opened to the public in 2094, built using 100,000 cubic feet of granite. The primary contract supplier for the memorial: New England Stone. It placed a bid, by the way, we're told, to build the Martin Luther King memorial, but never received a response from the Martin Luther King memorial people.

The company says, quote -- "Given that there are over 50 active granite quarries domestically offering a full palette of colors, it boggles one's mind to think the selection committee couldn't find an American stone to represent one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century."

We found there is, in fact, plenty of granite produced in this country. In 2005, the United States produced 416 metric tons of the stone, valued at more than $100 million. And by the way, this building we're broadcasting from tonight, the Time Warner Center, home to our studios here, built with granite from New England Stone. Not exactly a small project either.

Americans -- well, they've got plenty to say about plans to honor one of America's greatest civil rights icons with a memorial made in communist China. The groundbreaking for the monument is set for December 2008. We'll continue to bring you all of the latest developments.

Credit goes to Fisher, Dobbs, and the other individuals who remind us that the sculpture depicting the U.S.A.'s greatest civil rights leader ought to be made in America, by Americans.

Decline Of The Middle Class

As described in this essay by Maggie Mahar and frequently by Lou Dobbs (yes, that Lou Dobbs), the middle class has lost ground in the United States. (Some portion, though not most, of this can be attributed to George W. Bush.) Focusing on the poor as a route to the White House admittedly is tricky, and likely will prove unsuccessful, whether for John Edwards or anyone else. Clearly, it cannot be accomplished without linking the fate of the middle class to to that of the poor. One means to this end is rhetorical- simply referring regularly to "the middle class" and less often to "the poor." Another is by careful selection of issues, such as health care. Limiting criticism of the current system to failure to insure every American is a mistake, notwithstanding the emphasis placed therein by the mainstream media. (Note here the example given by Elizabeth Warren, in which a sick child's parents were urged to consider divorce and welfare. I suspect this sort of thing is not unusual.) The health care system has failed many, if not most, Americans, most of them middle class and not poor.
And there are policies, such as outsourcing and "free trade," which drag the middle class down. Recognizing the impact of these policies in separating the wealthy from the poor and the middle class will not please the Democratic Leisure Class (DLC) nor the MSM, but probably would stem the erosion of support of the Democratic Party by the middle class and working class and, probably, win a few elections.

Regent University Law School?

Lou Dobbs commented tonight that Regent University Law School, alma mater of Monica Goodling, has supplied 150 people to the Bush Administration since the latter took office in January, 2001. And he suggested that is a concern because Regent "ranks" 136 out of 170 law schools in the U.S.A. So... what's up with the other 34?