As a populist myself, I must admit that I was at first glance taken in by Lou Dobbs’s clarion call that there was indeed a war on the middle class. He was a voice in the wilderness decrying the exploitation of American workers at the hands of big business at a time when income disparities were rising to levels unseen in the US since the Gilded Age. While Dobbs shouted about the shrinking middle class, the disparities and every day problems of the average American and the American working poor were being ignored by both parties (save candidate John Edwards) and glossed over by much of our media, respun by Wall Street and business reporters as “a great time to be rich,” or buried on page eleven.
However, his nativist agenda was and remains unsettling. Subtle comments that could at first hearing be interpreted as caring about the exploitation of illegal workers and the effects of illegal immigration on citizens begin to break down upon closer examination. The illegal becomes the principal force in the demise of the middle class and other factors that play an even stronger role are ignored for the sake of giving frustrated Americans an easy answer and cause to rally behind. Instead of examining the destructive forces that are internal to us and flow out of our current economic system, we are presented with an outside villain and a shining American flag to rally behind.
In Dobbs’s world, the illegal is not only responsible for much of our economic woes but also our social ills and the breakdown of our social services system. Our tattered educational system is not bleeding a slow death due to bad and underfunded policies such as Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, Republican cuts to education, and the refusal and/or inability of states and local officials to fund and implement better policies and teachers, but because the children of illegals have devastated us. This ignores the fact that our public education system was strained well before the children of illegals arrived and that many states and areas have no significant illegal population.
The same flawed logic is applied to America’s broken health care system as well as our maxed out judicial and prison systems where once more Dobbs lays the blame not upon privatization, corporate greed, deregulation, republican philosophies (adopted and implemented by many democrats along with republicans) that have scaled back funding to social services since LBJ left office, and a slew of other contributing factors, but at the feet of illegals.
If economic and social ills weren’t enough, one of Dobbs’s recent accusations is that illegals have brought with them physical illnesses that have had a significant impact on the health of Americans. Perhaps for the sake of drama, Dobbs charges illegals with bringing a terrible biblical scourge.
“The invasion of illegal aliens is threatening the health of many Americans,” Mr. Dobbs said on his April 14, 2005, program. From there, he introduced his original report that mentioned leprosy, the flesh-destroying disease — technically known as Hansen’s disease — that has inspired fear for centuries.
According to a woman CNN identified as a medical lawyer named Dr. Madeleine Cosman, leprosy was on the march. As Ms. Romans, the CNN correspondent, relayed: “There were about 900 cases of leprosy for 40 years. There have been 7,000 in the past three years.”
Despite being confronted by 60 minutes and NY Times reporter David Leonhardt, Dobbs has stuck by his story.
Of course, he has never acknowledged on the air that his program presented false information twice. Instead, he lambasted the officials from the law center for saying he had. Even yesterday, he spent much of our conversation emphasizing that there really were 7,000 cases in the leprosy registry, the government’s 30-year database. Mr. Dobbs is trying to have it both ways.
The leprosy charge and ensuing debacle has led to higher level of scrutiny of Dobbs’s comments. Critics like the Southern Poverty Law Center are starting to be taken seriously and the charge that several white supremacist sympathizers have been on his show is now seeing the light of day.
The problem of illegal immigration is real as is the desperate need for a voice that can speak for the rest of us but Lou Dobbs is as much a rhinestone cowboy as the Connecticut Yankee holding court at the White House.
For NY Times on Dobbs and his distortions click here.
Technorati Tags: Lou Dobbs racism, Lou Dobbs nativist, illegal immigration, war on middle class Lou Dobbs leprosy,
I am so glad to hear someone else comment on what has always bugged the heck out of me about Lou Dobbs. I consider myself a liberal/progressive and have always enjoyed CNN and all of it’s broadcasters, with the exception of Lou. He is obsessed with illegal immigrants and as you said he blames everything on them, to the exclusion of looking at other factors that play a roll in Americas issues. Thanks for expressing this so well and further exposing his bias.
Leo, thanks for the wonderful comment.
In my opinion, Lou Dobbs is particularly dangerous because he wraps his obsession in populist rhetoric. If you’re not paying careful attention he really does sound like he cares about the middle class.
Jen, yeah you’re right. He does pretend to be liberal in his views, when in truth I suspect he’s extremely xenophobic. Hopefully, his viewers are smart enough to catch on to his pseudo-populist bull. If not, maybe they’ll catch your post and be tipped off-lol. Take care.