Lou Dobbs
Lou Dobbs to Fox Business
Too crazy for CNN? Cable's second-place "business" channel will have you
Lou Dobbs 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 and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.
Lou Dobbs signs with Fox Business Network
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.
Lou Dobbs’ illegal immigrants
The former CNN host made a living spreading fear about undocumented workers -- while employing them
during taping for Fox News channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," in New York, Monday, Nov. 16, 2009. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)(Credit: Kathy Willens) 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.”
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Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard.
Lou Dobbs to headline the next Tea Party convention
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.)
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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.
Dobbs goes back to Birtherism
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.
What’s Dobbs up to?
An odd letter arrives from a firm representing the former CNN host
When I got to the office yesterday, there was a strange letter waiting for me on my desk. It came from the Dilenschneider Group, a firm that has been representing former CNN host Lou Dobbs, and it included some cryptic language about his future plans.
The letter appears to be a form sent to political journalists who’ve written about Dobbs recently — there was a similar envelope addressed to our Joe Conason also on my desk. That’s somewhat unusual to begin with, and the content of the letter wasn’t any less unusual. It didn’t give much hint as to what, exactly, Dobbs’ future plans are, but it did hint that he has some, and it appeared to suggest he might be doing some further walking back of his anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Continue Reading CloseAlex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon. More Alex Koppelman.
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