The Pink Flamingo :: Lou Dobbs Wants to Run for Governor of NJ

News is starting to circulate that Lou Dobbs, that bastion of anti-immigration sweetness and light is thinking about running as a Republican for the governorship of New Jersey. Currently Dobbs is registered as an Independent. Let’s hope he stays that way.

The WSJ reports:

“…Dobbs, also a best-selling author, has a loyal following — a draft movement to get him to run for president earned some notoriety earlier this year. The news anchor has also become a divisive figure, in part because of his rhetoric on illegal immigration. Florida’s Bradenton Herald reported today on a CNN boycott being organized by the Hispanic Institute because of Dobbs’s “irresponsible assertions” on U.S. immigration policies. “Ninety-nine percent of what he broadcasts is offensive to us,” said Gus West, president of the institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit….”

From the SPLC:

“…For more than two years now, Dobbs has served up a populist approach to immigration on nightly segments of his newscast entitled "Broken Borders." He has relentlessly covered the issue, although hardly from a traditional news perspective -- Dobbs favors clamping down on illegal immigration, and his "reporting" never fails to make that clear. He has covered the same issues, and the same anti-immigration leaders, time after time after time. In recent months, Dobbs has run countless upbeat reports on the "citizen border patrols" that have sprung up around the country since last April's Minuteman Project, a paramilitary effort to seal the Arizona border. But there's one thing Lou Dobbs won't do. No matter what others report about the movement, Dobbs has failed to present mounting and persistent evidence of anti-Hispanic racism in anti-immigration groups and citizen border patrols.
It's not that Dobbs hasn't allowed a pro-immigration activist or two to complain about efforts like the Minuteman Project ("vigilantes," according to President Bush), or even that he has made racist statements on his show. What the anchorman has done is repeatedly decline to present the evidence that links these groups to racism, calling the very idea "mind-boggling." On his July 29 show, he called the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which he said he liked in other ways, "despicable" and "reprehensible" for saying otherwise….”

My complaint with Dobbs is the fact that he has accepted without hesitation the incorrect facts spoon fed to him by those with less than pure agendas.

“…Secret Mexican conspiracies to take over the American Southwest or merge with Canada and the United States. Murders and drunken-driving deaths caused by "illegal aliens" reaching astounding levels. Emergency rooms in California, overwhelmed by the migrants, going out of business. Jobs stolen and wages lost to the tune of billions. Epidemics of frightening diseases like leprosy.

Where do these ideas come from?
In a surprising number of cases, they are propounded on mainstream cable television and radio shows and are even voiced by national politicians. And these tales are dangerous. When millions of Americans are told by people they trust that immigration from the south is destroying their country, many of them take that as fact. It's no surprise that some even respond with criminal violence.

That's why a debate this spring between the Southern Poverty Law Center and CNN host Lou Dobbs was important. For more than four years now, Dobbs has been delivering almost nightly reports suggesting that undocumented immigration is harming this country in innumerable ways. On the way, he's managed to spread ideas that are not only one-sided, but in some cases entirely false.

Take leprosy.
On May 6, CBS' "60 Minutes" ran a profile of Dobbs in which correspondent Lesley Stahl reported that in 2005, CNN reporter Christine Romans "told Dobbs that there have been 7,000 cases of leprosy in the U.S. in the past three years." Stahl pointed out that the government had actually reported that that was the number of cases in America over 30 years, not three. In the three years referenced by Romans, in fact, the government registered just 398 new cases. "If we reported it, it's a fact," Dobbs responded defiantly. He was asked how he could guarantee that. "Because I'm the managing editor, and that's the way we do business. We don't make up numbers, Lesley. Do we?"

The next night, on his own show, Dobbs, after lambasting me for comments I'd made in Stahl's story, repeated that he stood "100%" behind Romans' report. And he brought back Romans, who said: "I was quoting from Dr. Madeleine Cosman, a respected medical lawyer and medical historian… : ‘Suddenly, in the past three years, America has more than 7,000 cases of leprosy.'"
On May 15, SPLC ran ads in The New York Times and USA Today asking that CNN retract Dobbs' false leprosy claim, as Dobbs himself refused to. The following day, SPLC President Richard Cohen and I were invited on Dobbs' show, presumably to argue out the veracity of Romans' claim.

What we were met with was a classic bait and switch….”

I could care less what Lou Dobbs does. My problem with Dobbs is the fact that he has taken up an agenda, roused rabble, and inflamed the worst intentions of some very bad people. He has provided factually incorrect information to good and decent people, who trust him. We come to expect this sort of behavior from the media. I guess he’d make a good politician, too, when you consider his track record.

Dime con quien andas y te digo quien eres.

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