11/18/2009
Joy abounded in the well-appointed offices of the Treason Lobby on November 11 when Lou Dobbs announced his immediate resignation from CNN. The remaining anchor from the news network’s founding had been a real thorn in the side of immigration enthusiasts and their success in ousting him elicited "victory" ululations. They had used the usual bogus accusations of "racism" and hate against "immigrants" (Dobbs actually only ever opposed illegal aliens) to intimidate CNN top management into reining Dobbs back in his immigration coverage, which led to his quitting.
Dobbs has taken care to describe the split as amicable. But there is no question he was pushed out by being muzzled from doing the kind of reporting his standards required. Although technically Dobbs resigned, his abrupt departure was censorship pure and simple.
Dobbs had tried to make nice with his critics by inviting them on his show for a friendly discussion of the issues, e.g. Mark Potok of the repulsive Southern Poverty Law Center ($PLC to VDARE.COM) and Janet Murguia of La Raza. But enemies of the nation cannot be dissuaded from their ultimate goal of a socialist, Hispanic USA by a few soft words.
On Monday night, Lou Dobbs appeared on Fox’s O'Reilly Factor for his first post-resignation interview. (Watch.) He emphasized that the disagreement was over "opinion" and how CNN wanted to do straight-ahead news reporting.
But the change in Lou Dobbs Tonight (LDT) programming wasn’t merely a removal of "opinion". The excellent LDT daily news reporting on that topic has disappeared also. Clearly, the "opinion" complaint was only a dodge, designed to get the noisy demographic revolutionaries off CNN’s back.
Arguably, the excellent reporting of the LDT staff on a subject that already gets too little coverage is an even bigger loss than Dobbs' personal commentary. Tech immigration expert John Miano recently blogged about the high standards of Dobbs' reporters and producers: "I always saw a team that did a level of fact checking unmatched by anyone in the business".
The enemies of traditional America got a big win by using the leftist Alinsky strategy ("Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it").
The Open-Borders gang is clearly miffed that they haven’t already achieved their amnesty, notwithstanding the election of the most leftward President ever. After all, Obama promised in his campaign that immigration "reform" would be a top priority, and he presumably meant it. In April, he promised that an amnesty bill might be forthcoming in the fall. Now it has been postponed until 2010. So the Raza honchos needed a success to keep the troops engaged. Taking down Dobbs is likely seen as a fine consolation prize, with the promise of more to come.
The Dobbs take-down was a major operation, organized across the left/open-borders spectrum. They created anti-Dobbs websites like BastaDobbs.com and DropDobbs.com. Another website, WeCanStopTheHate.org, purports that the position of the majority of Americans — that immigration should be legal, controlled and reduced — is racist and hateful. Media Matters produced a TV ad that was broadcast on cable stations. Plus they orchestrated a persistent drumbeat of noise for months.
Below is a look at some of the players in the Dobbs attack machine who benefit greatly by having less accurate immigration reporting on television …
IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
The attorneys who labor daily to adjust the status of every Juan and Maria believe that the censoring of Dobbs is very good for their goal of "CIR" — comprehensive immigration reform" a.k.a. amnesty.
"Lou Dobbs announced that he was leaving CNN on his show which aired November 11, 2009 … Immigration Daily has commented on Lou Dobbs often in the past (see: 2/28/08, 11/13/07, 7/2/07, and 5/14/07). Looking forward, we ask, What is the impact on CIR? We believe that Lou Dobbs' abrupt departure is a strong indicator that the chance of CIR happening in the near future is very bright. Stay tuned." [Comment: Goodbye Lou, Hello CIR, Immigration Daily, November 13, 2009]
$PLC
Last February, Lou Dobbs Tonight refuted a Southern Poverty Law Center report that misreported FBI statistics (See $PLC Misrepresents "Hate" Crime). The Poverty Palace is famous even among the Left for being a hopelessly money-grubbing scam outfit, e.g. see Alexander Cockburn’s King of the Hate Business (Counterpunch, May 15, 2009).
Nine years ago, Ken Silverstein wrote a devastating commentary on Morris Dees and the SPLC in Harpers, dissecting a typical swatch of Dees' solicitations. At that time, as Silverstein pointed out, the SPLC was "the wealthiest civil rights group in America", with $120 million in assets.
As of October 2008 the net assets of the SPLC were $170,240,129.The merchant of hate himself, Mr. Dees, was paid an annual $273,132 as chief trial counsel, and the SPLC’s president and CEO, Richard Cohen, $290,193. Total revenue in 2007 was $44,727,257 and program expenses $20,804,536. In other words, the Southern Poverty Law Center was raising twice as much as it was spending on its proclaimed mission. Fund-raising and administrative expenses accounted for $9 million, leaving $14 million to be put in the center’s vast asset portfolio.
Needless to say, the $PLC has cheered the exit of Lou Dobbs from the television airwaves. When President Richard Cohen appeared on the O'Reilly show November 17, he gloated: "We're happy to get someone like Lou off the air who has spent the last part of his career poisoning the immigration debate with lies and racist theories". (Watch.) O'Reilly got in a good line: "I feel that you and your organization, while you do some good, are fascist in your approach to people with whom you disagree".
LA RAZA
"The Race" was a major player in the anti-Dobbs coalition. Apparently the time Janet Murguia got on LDT didn’t count for much in the end, particularly after an on-air argument that ended Lou Dobbs' attempts to school her in the fine points of reason.
" 'Lou Dobbs’s resignation from CNN yesterday is an important step forward in restoring greater fairness, accuracy, and balance on CNN and cable news,' stated Janet Murguía, President and CEO of NCLR (National Council of La Raza), the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. Through its Wave of Hope campaign, and more recently as a founding member of the Drop Dobbs coalition, NCLR has long raised concerns about the gross distortions, misrepresentations, and falsehoods that Dobbs’s program has perpetuated, including by presenting extremist voices as 'immigration experts."'" [News Release, November 12]
The Anti-Defamation League
The ADL surely liked Lou Dobbs even less after he referred to the organization as "a joke" while discussing its sham studies of "code words for hate" (Transcript LDT, February 4, 2008). The ADL utilized the Alinsky playbook to smear the reputation of an honest journalist as it falsely accused Dobbs of purveying extremist rhetoric into the mainstream.
(For more on the ADL, see my 2008 article, Why Does The Anti-Defamation League Want Jews (And America) To Commit Suicide?)
MEDIA MATTERS
The Soros-funded lefty media "watchdog" was particularly jubilant and self-congratulatory about its part in unseating Dobbs.
" 'For too long, CNN provided Lou Dobbs with its stamp of approval as he pursued a dangerous, one-sided and all too often false conspiracy tinged crusade against immigrants,' said Eric Burns, president of Media Matters. 'This is a happy day for all those who care about this nation of immigrants and believe in the power of media to elevate the political discourse.' "[Statement on Dobbs' Resignation from CNN, November 11, 2009]
LULAC
Rumor has it that the League of Latin American Citizens was once a pro-American group, a possibility hinted by their patriotic emblem. But that was then, this is now.
" 'After years of giving Lou Dobbs an unparalleled and powerful perch from which to spread hate, fear, and misinformation about immigrants, the executives at CNN have finally realized that they could no longer justify his nightly smear campaign against the hardest working people in America,' stated Rosa Rosales, LULAC National President. 'I am amazed that it took them so long to realize that the show was beyond the bounds of common decency…'
" 'While we strongly believe in the right to free speech, that does not mean that demagogues have the right to a prime time show in which they bash hard working people of color,' stated LULAC National Executive Director Brent Wilkes. 'CNN and other media outlets have a responsibility to provide a fair and rational discourse on important issues affecting their viewers or risk a backlash from the public.'" [Press Release: LULAC Hails Removal of Lou Dobbs from CNN, November 11, 2009]
FRANK SHARRY/AMERICA’s VOICE
Frank Sharry is an old hand at slinging baloney about the joys of mass immigration. His new front claims it "stands with the strong majority of Americans support real comprehensive immigration reform". In fact, polls consistently show that most citizens reject rewarding lawbreakers and want legal immigration reduced.
"The following is a statement from Frank Sharry, [Email him] Executive Director of America’s Voice:
"'CNN executives saw their ratings shrink, advertising dollars dry up, and the integrity of their journalism impugned due to the vitriol spewed by Dobbs. These same executives seem to now be aware that there is a growing impatience in America for solving problems responsibly and not just shouting about them. They also must be aware of the growing power of Latinos and other Americans who are tired of the Dobbs tirade.' "[Dobbs Departure from CNN: Politicians Need to Solve an Important Issue that Dobbs Merely Exploited, November 12, 2009]
NEW YORK TIMES
The NYT has long been the big dog leading the smaller dogs (i.e., lesser news organizations) in proper liberal groupthink, particularly regarding immigration.
"Mr. Dobbs’s CNN program has long been a nesting ground for untruths and conspiracy theories: fretting over a nonexistent, immigrant-borne leprosy epidemic; questioning President Obama’s citizenship; issuing dark warnings about the 'North American Union, a supposed plot to strangle United States sovereignty.
"It’s hard to pinpoint how much damage these kinds of ideas have done to the national discussion of illegal immigration, but they have been corrosive. Solutions have withered as many politicians parrot the central myth that people desperate to seek new lives in the United States are an affliction to be feared, not an opportunity to be engaged, future Americans who could enrich the country as immigrants always have and will." [A Farewell to Lou, November 12, 2009]
(We should say something about the leprosy problem — this seems to have been a numerical error on the part of the late Madeline Cosman — see her article Illegal Aliens and American Medicine, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Spring 2005 [PDF] It’s not Dobb’s fault, and we can’t question Dr. Cosman about it because she’s deceased.
But this error has led to a lot of moralistic whining from professional moralistic whiners like The New York Times’s David Leonhardt [Send him mail] who wrote an article titled Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs [May 30, 2007]. In this article he says things like " Orwellian chestnut … never acknowledged on the air … shameless…somewhat flexible relationship with reality … the heir to the nativist tradition … used fiction and conspiracy theories as a weapon against the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Jews and, now, the Mexicans. " However, this article totally fails to mention Dr. Cosman’s source: Leprosy, a Synonym for a Stigma, Returns, by Sharon Lerner, February 18, 2003, a medical scare story that ran in…the New York Times.)
It might seem difficult to understand how such a reprehensible assemblage of obvious hucksters could have been successful. But they are helped by unlimited money and the fawning fact-phobic liberals who run the MainStream Media. A fat checkbook allows the Raza jackboots to repeat lies until they become familiar, then believable by the weaklings in corporate journalism.
The removal of LDT from television is a big loss — and not just because of the immigration issue.
Besides immigration, LDT poked into topics little investigated by most dinosaur media outlets, including the danger to American business and national security posed by spies from Red China. While the MSM speaks ambiguously about difficulties with "export control laws", Dobbs' reported honestly about the 3000 Chinese front companies here for spy projects and the cases of individual Chinese spies, like Chi Mak.
The Dobbs show also supported the Second Amendment — a rarity in the MSM universe — with reporter Bill Tucker doing many memorable segments. This YouTube clip from last February (Lou Dobbs "second amendment rights") analyzed the loose talk from Attorney General Holder about how US guns are the cause of Mexico’s narco violence. (BS of course, as Tucker and Dobbs explained.)
Many in the professional press seem happy to be rid of Dobbs. They must prefer the untroubled liberal cocoon of beliefs and don’t see encroaching censorship as a problem.
Even supporter Bill O'Reilly doesn’t see the danger to right-of-center TV talking heads, though his pal Glenn Beck has been hammered by the same factions. (Beck was recently named by the ADL as the "most important mainstream media figure who has repeatedly helped to stoke the fires of anti-government anger".) Fox News may be a safe zone for non-liberal thought, but it shouldn’t be the only cable station where reporting about immigration chaos is acceptable. Having a comfy island is not really safe when the flood waters of censorship are getting higher.
And any network that employs the arrogant Hispanic supremacist Geraldo Rivera cannot be considered altogether conservative (see Newsbuster’s Geraldo Blames Lou Dobbs for Anti-Hispanic Sentiment in U.S.).
The censorship of Lou Dobbs shows that America is not immune to the diversity-fueled thought police seen in Europe, where intimidation worked in the free-speech struggle over the Danish Mohammed cartoons. (When Yale University Press published a book about the case, it left out the drawings that caused so much violence by Muslims, so we are not much better than the cowering Europeans.)
Lou Dobbs can still be heard on the radio, although without his big posse of top-notch reporters. His future remains undefined, though he has not ruled out politics.
It’s not a great time to have less information in the public sphere.
The Obama administration cares even less about what the people want than the Bush bunch. Polls show that Americans don’t like the Democrat healthcare plan, consider the economy the top priority rather than nanny-state Obamacare, don’t buy the kumbaya one-worlder fantasy Obama hopes to jam through despite public opposition.
I am less trusting that Congress won’t try to ram amnesty legislation down our throats: in for a dime, in for a dollar may be the sentiment among the Democrat leadership cadre. If they are going to catch hell from the voters next November anyway, then they might as well go for the whole enchilada. The top Dems see a big amnesty as the royal road to a permanent Democrat majority extending far into the future, driven by millions of lawbreaking aliens grateful for their pathway to citizenship and a full array of benefits.
Washington acts increasingly insane every day. The economy is crumbling while millions of jobs have been lost under Obama, yet he is pursuing healthcare to spend even more money we don’t have — and, of course, the idea of an immigration moratorium to help the unemployed is simply never discussed. We are mega-trillions of dollars in debt, yet no one questions the outsourcing-insourcing economy that has gutted the country. It’s business as usual in D.C., even as the ship of state is careening out of control.
We are fortunate to have the internet to fill in the holes left by the failures of the liberal dinosaur media. A unique resource like VDARE.com is more important than ever before — and your support keeps us fed and caffeinated.
The grass-roots Tea Party movement iis a hopeful sign and it appears to have legs. However we all need to increase our activism in light of the growing power of the anti-borders extremists, who are looking to claim more victims.
Brenda Walker (email her) lives in Northern California and publishes two websites, LimitsToGrowth.org and ImmigrationsHumanCost.org. She once composed a poem about Frank Sharry:
There once was a low-life named Sharry.
Whose dislike for borders was scary.
He shows dedication
To destroy the nation
And overpopulate city and prairie.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.