The ‘flea’ CNN’s Lou Dobbs couldn’t shake off
Roberto Lovato of Presente.org
Roberto Lovato, co-founder of Latino advocacy group Presente.org, began publicly demanding for CNN to drop anchor Lou Dobbs only a few months ago. Earlier this week, during his evening broadcast, Dobbs suddenly resigned after three decades with CNN. Looming over the abrupt exit was Dobbs’s coverage of illegal immigration and the controversy this coverage had generated.
Lovato, along with other Latino and immigrant rights activists, had said Dobbs didn’t deserve the legitimacy of a CNN platform to air his hardline and sometimes inaccurate views. The activists accused Dobbs of using his program to air obsessive, distorted and prejudiced coverage of illegal immigration. As pressure on Dobbs grew, with online petitions and rallies in major U.S. cities, the veteran anchor used his radio program to slam Lovato as one of his “fleas” and accused critics of undermining his right to free speech.
The day after Dobbs resigned I interviewed Lovato at length for New America Media, the San Francisco-based nonprofit news organization where I work, and where Lovato was also a contributor before leading the “Basta Dobbs” campaign. Here is part of our exchange:
Q: As your campaign accumulated momentum, Lou Dobbs invoked the First Amendment and accused his enemies of trying to silence him merely because he opposed illegal immigration. Has a legitimate voice been muzzled?
A: No less a figure than Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, said he would fire Lou Dobbs at the drop of a hat for what he has done to hurt Latinos and immigrants. There are precedents for this — people who have been taken off the local and national airwaves for what they said in just a brief moment of airtime. It happened to Don Imus, for example. But Lou Dobbs has had a free ride on the rollercoaster of hate at CNN for many years. This has nothing to do with the First Amendment. This is about hatred, and the business of profiting from hatred against Latinos and other immigrant groups versus profiting from legitimate journalism like “Latino in America” [a series broadcast last month that was anchored by CNN's Soledad O'Brien].
Q: Lou Dobbs framed the resignation as his own decision, motivated by his desire to have a freer hand in engaging in political activity and advocacy around issues that matter to him, including illegal immigration.What do you think of that explanation?
A: It’s hard to know what lurks in the dark heart of Lou Dobbs. We need to look at his record of prevarication, myth-making, and outright lies. That may be his modus operandi until his last days. What’s certain is that his exit was abrupt. The great anchors of our time, like Walter Cronkite, don’t depart from one day to the next, unexpectedly. In any case, in the same way that it would not be entirely true for the “Basta Dobbs” campaign to claim total credit, nor would it make any sense to think that this is something that Dobbs only did of his own volition, or to think that CNN didn’t feel external pressure. They did.
Q: The figure of Lou Dobbs and his exit from CNN raises the question of what the parameters should be for a legitimate stance against illegal immigration. What do you think they are?
A: To begin with, Lou Dobbs’ problem wasn’t just with undocumented immigrants. His vision took in legal immigrants as a whole and Latinos as a whole. Dobbs knows we don’t live in the Jim Crow era of naked racism. You don’t use tools like the “N” word anymore. Instead you use the “I” word. You call people “illegals” or “invaders” and variations of the “illegal” term. Lou Dobbs, in using these words, tarnished an entire community, and he did so for years. So in the end, he got what anyone’s going to get when they attack an entire community: people standing up and saying “basta ya” … enough. We need a more sane and rational debate around immigration. We don’t need name-calling, and nonsense, and lies that are a total bore, and a great concern to many of us.
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‘basta ya’ – enough already!! If you’ve ever heard an irritated latino utter that phrase, it doesn’t even require translation.
Great job remaining objective in your questioning Marcelo… i do find it curious that la pulga didn’t provide an answer to your last question (although can’t say i blame him.)
Thanks for the comment Andy.
Yes I think the best answer to my last question is provided by Victor Davis Hanson, who wrote the book Mexifornia, a kind of extended lament about the impact of immigration on California. While I disagree with his dark view of immigration, I think Hanson is an interesting read and doesn’t seem to descend into name calling or demagoguery.
I have to disagree with your assessment of Hanson. While there might be some reason to read the man on classical military history, his contemporary views are leaning towards war mongering. He loves our attack on Afghanistan, Iraq and preaches attacking Iran now…without any provocation. That is not my view of America. He grew up in a family of wealthy farmers in Central California where the culture is divided into us and the pickers. As far as I can tell he has been wrong about everything, believing the neo-con crap that has us in endless conflict with Islam.
Mexifornia is name calling. This state was founded by the Spanish not Sweden as he may want to believe…all our major cities carry Spanish names as do most of the western states. Hanson is but a number of Think Tank intellectuals who hide their prejudices behind an academic cloak. In his world of ancient conflict the conquerors vanquished their enemies and the Hansons and Cheneys and Buchanans of immigrant stock stoke the worse of this country’s impulses and past.
In my opinion the man is a racist and a danger to a peace loving America.
Libtree you raise a number of very intriguing points. It may be that I have to write a post on Hanson. I suppose you will disagree with me, but I think it is possible to be a thoughtful hawk and a thoughtful nativist, however much I disagree with these positions. Many left and liberal journalists and activists I know would laugh at me and/or think I’m dangerously wrong on allowing Hanson any space in my mind or give him any ink at all. They would have said the same thing about Samuel P. Huntington, Mr. Class of Civilizations, etc.
Hanson is notable at the very least because he is intellectual and cerebral and doesn’t get shrill, even though his views overlap to a great degree with the vociferous right. As for what his deep motivations are, I am always careful before presuming to know what lies in men and women’s hearts and minds. Hopefully I can write a post about all this and you will comment.
Hanson posts here:
In response to another comment. See in context »http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/
Ballve,
There are times when I get very frustrated with the reasonable, a reasoned well thought out argument can be made for slavery…I have read them…or for Terrorism as freedom fighting…as in Exodus…a reasoned argument can be made for exterminating Jews or American Indians…a reasoned argument is not a moral one. Lots of bad people with dubious morals have hidden behind these arguments and others, good people, driven by fear to hurt the innocent.
I am not an unreasonable person but these guys ideas have been put to the test, but these very think tanks that employ the likes of Hanson, preached and created an economy that depends on immigration, then turn around an complain about the results when there is a rush to the bottom.
Yeah you look into these guys…look hard and not with an open mind but an objective one.
In response to another comment. See in context »Good reporting, Marcelo. T/S needs more reporting such as yours. Whether Lovato stops playing the race card himself and permits a legitimate debate on our ridiculously high levels of immigration, both legal and illegal, remains to be seen. Will all us immigration-reductionists be racists because we want to send illegal residents home–and they mostly happen to be Latinos?
Dobbs, like most crusaders, got caught up in his own
(self-)righteous vortex. His birther obsession was the real nail, even if Lovato doesn’t seem to want to give any direct mention of that.
However, let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Immigration, especially illegal immigration, is a subsidy to Big Business–Lovato should know that. A growing US population is harmful to our own environment and to the global environment–a USAmerican has 5-8 times the impact of a Mexican or Chinese. What word to describe people here illegally is accurate? Illegal alien, illegal resident, undocumented worker, mere immigrants, migrants?
Immigrants are not a race, color, creed, national origin or sexual preference, so I think Lovato is wrong to say that the word Immigrant is necessarily used as a substitute for the N word. Mexico is by far the greatest sending country. The vast majority of the traffic comes from Mexico and Central America over the Mexican border. Mexico encourages this traffic. So it is natural that most of the focus lies with Mexico and Central/Latin America.
The class of people Dobbs attacked was based on behavior, illegal entry. Last I looked at my Constitution criticizing behavior was fair game. See if Lovato doesn’t continue to play the race card whenever discussion of immigration comes up. Journalists and writers like you and Lovato need to heed the words of Deep Throat, “Follow the money.”
Oh, btw, Dobbs is married to a brown-skinned American of Mexican descent. You ought to publish her photo, Marcelo, just to be fair and balanced.