The former CNN host has been saying too many positive things about immigration for some of his fans' taste
Lou Dobbs may hope that he can get Latinos to forget about the past few years of his CNN show, and the myths about Latino immigrants in which he trafficked. (Doing so, after all, would probably be a necessary step if he does want to mount even a semi-serious run for office.) But the people who liked what he was saying back then aren’t going to forget — in fact, they’re pretty upset about Dobbs trying to rewrite history.
Dobbs has even managed to turn off the man who was once his biggest supporter. William Gheen, the president of Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC), has devoted quite a bit of energy in recent years to trying to persuade Dobbs to run for president; he even set up a Web site about the cause. But in a press release sent out Thursday morning, ALIPAC announced that it’s “withdrawing support” for the former CNN anchor.
From the release:
Americans for Legal Immigration PAC is withdrawing support for Lou Dobbs after years, including the suspension of websites calling on Dobbs to run for President due to the perceived change in Mr. Dobbs’s stances on immigration issues.
“While Mr. Dobbs claims his positions have not changed, however, that is not the perception of many of our mutual supporters,” said William Gheen of ALIPAC. “His recent comments on Telemundo and his national radio show supporting some kind of path to citizenship for illegal immigrants is inconsistent with positions of ALIPAC and the views of most American citizens.” ….
ALIPAC is suspending the operations of two Dobbs fan websites. The Facebook “Draft Lou Dobbs for President or US Senate” and the fan site www.LouDobbsForPresident.org will suspend operations and have a notice of ALIPAC’s discontinued support placed upon them. The site www.LouDobbsForPresident.org was launched back in early 2008 and has generated pledges of over $660,000 in contributions if Lou Dobbs were to run for office.
“We’ve received so many demands from prior Dobbs supporters to remove their pledges of support that we have to suspend all operations on the Dobbs fan sites,” said Gheen. “Lou Dobbs has deeply offended his base of supporters and ALIPAC is going to remain loyal to those Americans who support our existing immigration laws instead of Amnesty disguised as reform.”
Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon. More Alex Koppelman
Too crazy for CNN? Cable's second-place "business" channel will have you
Fired from your old media job because your racist comments embarrassed the management? Good news: The largely unwatched Fox Business Channel will have you! That’s the current cable TV home of Don Imus, and now they’ve picked up the vastly more vile Lou Dobbs, formerly of CNN.
“Dobbs will develop and host a new daily program premiering in the first quarter of 2011,” Fox says.
Dobbs was let go from CNN because his populist independent shtick was based mostly on relentless fear-mongering about immigration, complete with baldly racist lies about “illegals” and the endorsement of conspiracy theories involving brown people seizing control of the American Southwest. It was a gross, indefensible performance, and instead of defending it Dobbs usually just pretends he’s always been an ally of the poor, put-upon immigrant.
(Of course Dobbs really didn’t step in it at CNN until he began wading into Birther territory.)
Will Fox Business Lou be the fiery bigot or the “surprisingly reasonable” libertarian? Does it matter? Either way he’s a reprehensible fraud.
The Fox Business Network was always a silly idea, because the regular cable business channel is already explicitly conservative, so now it seems increasingly like Fox Business is just Fox News 2, with a stock ticker. Lou Dobbs used to be a real business reporter, ages ago, but he discovered that repeating Rush Limbaugh’s punchlines is more lucrative.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene
Will host a new daily program set to start in the first three months of 2011
Former CNN anchor and current radio talk show host Lou Dobbs is joining the Fox Business Network.
The network said Wednesday that Dobbs will host a new daily program that will start in the first three months of next year. He’ll also provide analysis and commentary on business news throughout the network’s day.
Dobbs hosted a popular business-oriented program on CNN for many years that gradually changed into an opinionated general news program.
His campaign against illegal immigration made him a focus of political controversy. He tried to tone things down at CNN’s request but quit a year ago, concluding that it was no longer a good fit.
Since then, he has hosted a weekday syndicated radio show and has contemplated running for political office.
More Associated Press
The former CNN host made a living spreading fear about undocumented workers -- while employing them
For years, Lou Dobbs made millions of dollars a year sputtering in rage every night on CNN against illegal immigrants — and the employers who hired them. But then he nimbly flipped around and spent some of that cash paying undocumented workers to take care of his mansions and prize horses. Isabel Macdonald nails him to the wall at the Nation.
From “Lou Dobbs, American Hypocrite.”
Based on a yearlong investigation, including interviews with five immigrants who worked without papers on his properties, The Nation and the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute have found that Dobbs has relied for years on undocumented labor for the upkeep of his multimillion-dollar estates and the horses he keeps for his 22-year-old daughter, Hillary, a champion show jumper.
Not to detract in any way from Macdonald’s fine investigative reporting, but it’s just a bit amazing that it took this long to hoist Dobbs on his own vile, demagoguing, nativist petard. The world of thoroughbred horses has long relied on immigrant labor (legal and illegal), and one imagines it would be a trifle difficult to find a multimillion-dollar estate in the United States in which there were not any undocumented workers busy pruning bushes. Long hours, lousy working conditions, backbreaking labor, low pay? Put those conditions together and you will find illegal immigrants.
From time to time Dobbs has dropped coy hints of a plan for a second career in politics — as senator, or even president. Kudos to the Nation for staking those ambitions through the heart. It’s become routine in American life to see preachers found guilty of the supposed “sins” that they decry from the pulpit. But for Lou Dobbs to be convicted of exploiting illegal immigrant labor — that’s special.
Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard
The former CNN host will help the real Americans take their country back in Vegas thus summer
Oh, good, has-been blowhard Lou Dobbs will address the next “National Tea Party Unity Convention” in Las Vegas this July. Book your flight now!
(The last Tea Party convention, by the way, was in February. How many conventions are they going to have in one year?)
After a couple of years of boosting ratings for his formerly bland CNN show by spreading foul lies about invading hordes of illegal Mexican immigrants stealing jobs and spreading leprosy, Dobbs was finally fired by the original cable news network because he eventually started being a Birther, for fun. (He was also fired because hosts aren’t allowed to express any opinions, reasonable or batshit, on CNN.)
Since then, he’s been doing a cookie-cutter right-wing talk radio show, and he’s probably written another two or thee books with titles like “AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE” or AMERICA’S RAGIN’ REAL AMERICAN INDEPENDENT” or “AMERICA: THE LOU DOBBS SOLUTION” or something.
Did you read the recent GQ profile of former CNN host Lou Dobbs? It turns out he’s a fascinating character, more rounded and complex than most of his liberal critics think. You know, just like every other right-wing populist propagandist when they’re profiled by a liberal magazine reporter. Sure, he repeats the same old racist cant as Michael Savage on the air to millions of people every day, but over dinner he is shockingly reasonable!
I imagine the Tea Partiers won’t be getting the “reasonable” Lou Dobbs.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene
Former CNN host claims about "toxicity" from "extreme Left" on the issue
Last summer, then-CNN host Lou Dobbs embraced the Birthers, an event that may have hastened his eventual departure from the network. Even now, he’s having trouble letting go.
In an interview with Esquire, Dobbs commented:
I ask a question, and I am attacked from the extreme Left as a quote-unquote birther. I mean, what the hell is that? When you can create a controversy by asking what seems to me still a perfectly commonsense question? It has been used in the extreme Left to create a toxicity that is just unbelievable.
That’s a pretty ballsy thing for Dobbs to say. It’s the “extreme Left” that’s created the “toxicity” on this, and not the people asserting that President Obama is a liar and a fraud — even a possible traitor — based on no evidence save the color of his skin and the foreignness of his last name? OK, Lou.
(Hat-tip to GOP 12.)
Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon. More Alex Koppelman
Thanks, CNN, for making Lou Dobbs 
Racist Anti-Obama Sentiment Inevitable 
Even McCain Disagrees With You Lou: Obama Is A Citizen 
A match made on Craigslist adult services 
Can’t see the forest for the wood 
The things I carry 
When I lost the ability to type 
Pop art, the beaded edition 
The beautiful banality of high school 
The unemployed meet MacArthur’s tanks 
Demi’s last night out 
One day you’re in 
Pitch and catch 
