Dateline: 5.3.07 Extracted from COMMENT STREAM on DOCUMENTED—BILL OREILLY IS A PROFANE PURVEYOR OF PROPAGANDA
Lou Dobbs' unrelenting attacks on Hispanics is a giveaway about his true racist sentiments...It's not their illegality he objects to, it's the fact that they're not Central Casting "Aryan Americans"...
I thought it was a great story on Father Coughlin. I wonder if there couldn't be a follow up on the strange transformation of CNN's Lou Dobbs. He began his career as a business news commentator. I don't know anything about his earlier career but he showed up on CNN I would say sometime around 2001 although I don't remember the dates.
Then after several years a strange transformation began. First he began to colour his hair which had been grey/white to a light red. After that he began to cover general news events. His facial expressions and gestures became more expressive, and the tone of his delivery also altered to become more dramatic and slowly but surely he transformed himself into a populist, a spokesman for the middle class.
Selfless tribune of the people or fascistoid pied piper?
These days he doesn't bother to pretend to be objective in his coverage. His main target is the Spanish speaking population. How dare they speak Spanish in this country. He is vicious on the subject of illegal aliens, conflating the act of crossing the border illegally with violent crimes against people and property.
He also goes after globalization and the growing loss of American jobs. Again it is the fault of our government's softness on foreign governments like China who are out to get us.
There was a period when he had a hostile hectoring interview style against those who disagreed with him on this and other questions. Clearly the network made him tone it down.
One of the strangest features of the show is the kind of tete a tetes he conducts with "reporters" on the show. These are [obviously] scripted give and take by him and the so-called reporter with highly dramatized mannerisms on both sides and knowing nods.
He has written a book which of course is hawked on the show and he frequently reads e-mails urging him to run for president or other political office.
Dobbs, like Reilly, is trying to channel popular discontent. If times get worse then people like this can, I fear, become dangerous rather than just ludicrous. He is exploiting real problems in this country such as the growing dichotomy between the very rich and the rest of us--but then Hitler and Mussolini also claimed to represent the little guy.
NOTE TO OUR READERS: This is a "down payment" on a story we have been working on for some time, a profile of Lou Dobbs and his posturings as champion of "middle class" Americans—which we don't buy for a second. It would appear to us—so far—that Dobbs is just a modern version of an unreconstructed know-nothing nativist, a xenophobe with underhanded right-wing agendas and boundless hostility (except toward those who share Northern European ancestry, perhaps). Like O'Reilly, he uses his perch at CNN, of course, to indoctrinate and mobilize people in what is clearly an irresponsible direction. Against this backdrop, Carol White's comments struck us as felicitous and on point, and therefore worthy of our audience's attention.