The Dobbs Factor
Lou Dobbs loves it
The New York Times manages to produce an article about the controversy over Lou Dobbs that doesn’t really offer any specific examples of what Dobbs’ critics are talking about. But to get a flavor, the man’s strain of nativism runs so deep that he’s denounced St Patrick’s Day. His show is so unhinged that he promotes “birther” conspiracy theories. From time to time CNN has to scrub official transcripts of his show to eliminate casual racism. Dobbs thought the racist “Obama waffles” box was hilarious.
That just sets the backdrop for the kind of racial stereotyping, cavalier attitude toward the truth, and downright weirdness that characterizes his obsessive coverage of Hispanic immigration into the United States:
Dobbs has a long history of spreading hate and paranoia. He has routinely discussed the North American Union conspiracy theory, incorrectly claimed that undocumented immigrants drain social services and don’t pay taxes, and repeatedly amplified the falsehood that undocumented immigrants are disproportionately violent. He has been an unrepentant purveyor of hateful attacks, fraudulently claiming, for example, that immigrants are spreading leprosy and seek to reconquer the southwestern United States.
For all that, if CNN wants to stand by Dobbs then, fine, they should stand by Dobbs. But if they want to stand by Dobbs then they should stand by Dobbs and feature him prominently in their four-hour “Latino in America” documentary. After all, from what you can see watching the network day-to-day the executives at CNN think Dobbs has a credible and important perspective on this issue. Instead, they just kind of want to sweep the crazy uncle under the rug for the purposes of a big special, and then trot him back out again when everything’s back to normal.
49 Responses to “The Dobbs Factor”
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October 24th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Lou Dobbs has a point of view about issues and the news. That’s a common enough thing on CNN.
Your mediamatters.org quote lists genuine subjects of disagreement in American politics as even mentioning them were racist. Illegal immigrants do use social services and many don’t pay taxes. Many of them are violent criminals. A very few do have leprosy or other communicable diseases that are or were rare in the USA and many Mexicans have told me California should be part of Mexico.
You can disagree with Dobbs, but none of that is racist and almost all of it is exaggerated by mm.org.
In fact, this post is an unfounded attack on a media personality as racist for the simple offense of disagreeing with you and pointing out facts you many not want to think about.
October 24th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Well, no, not really.
We disagree with him because he’s a racist douchebag
October 24th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
the man’s strain of nativism runs so deep that he’s denounced St Patrick’s Day.
About time someone made an effort to keep the Irish in line. They’ve been running around unchecked for too long!
(And nice troll @ 1 BTW. Particularly appreciate the leprosy angle.)
October 24th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
About time someone made an effort to keep the Irish in line. They’ve been running around unchecked for too long!
They started taking down the “No Irish need apply” signs and it was all down hill from there. I need to do some investigating on how many micks got “liar loans” in progressive cities, I’ll bet there are a lot of them!
October 24th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
But Lou Dobbs has guests on his show who are Latino, and he’s polite to them! So….there!
Apart from the nativist slant, much of Dobbs’ show has as its core thesis the idea that all government actors (politicians, diplomats, civil servants) are incompetent at best, weak, corrupt and malevolent the rest of the time.
Barely a show goes by without Dobbs’ faux outraged “what in the world were they thinking,” while “three of the best political minds in the country,” (typically radio talk show hosts) add their own sniggering brickbats.
As an English observer of US politics, I’m just amazed at the strand which asserts that there is no conceivable problem which can be ameliorated by government action. It’s as if American society circa 1975 was immaculately conceived somehow, with a set of parasitical institutions which somehow leech the life from the virtuous.
October 24th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Sooo… what’s racist about the Obama Waffles box? Are we not allowed to draw caricatures of black people now? Is that it? Or is it that it merely makes fun of Obama?
As is so often on this blog, “racist” is thrown around as if it’s objective fact like, “that box is yellow.” But I’m not seeing it.
October 24th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Sooo… what’s racist about the Obama Waffles box? Are we not allowed to draw caricatures of black people now? Is that it? Or is it that it merely makes fun of Obama?
See? White people today don’t even understandtheir rich cultural heritage. How sad. This is exactly what Lou Dobbs is trying to reverse.
October 24th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Matt,
I think you’re letting your partisan affiliation (Dobbs does have substantial disagreements with Obama) get in the way of common sense here. It may not occur to your insulated creative class demographic, but many working Americans are concerned with the disproportionate costs (in terms of social services and communicable diseases) that rogue illegals are imposing on the economy. To parody this as the out-of-touch ranting of a crazy old man just demonstrates how insulated from genuine working class Americans you really are.
October 24th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
And it’s not that hard to find Texans who think that Texas is actually not supposed to be part of the United States of America. I don’t take them particularly seriously either.
October 24th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
What’s particularly disturbing here is the deliberate misplacement of facts or lack of facts used to target a broadcaster (i.e. the leprocy thing was brought up by Dr. Madelyn Cosman before she died, not Dobbs). Media Matters and the Tan Klan keep harping on this as if Dobbs made it up out of whole cloth.
Then there’s the hypocrisy of the whole thing. Here we have some sort of self-declared ethnic group claiming to be a “race” trying to silence a guy who they disagree with because he’s attacking a foreign criminal group…. just because the vast majority of that criminal group happen to be of the same ethnicity as those bitching and moaning about Dobbs… and nothing else. And this same bunch of pendejos think they aren’t ‘racist’ because of this? Ha! Listen, the moment any group of Americans called for the removal of propagandists Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas this same bunch of cretins would be screaming “RACISTS” and “XENOPHOBES” at the top of their lungs. Methinks you idiots protesteth too much.
October 24th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Newt’s asssertion that Dobb isn’t racist and that Matt is criticizing Dobbs for not agreeing with Matt’s beliefs is based on the simple premise that since Dobbs doesn’t say nigger, spick, wop, chink, gook, jap or faggot, he is not prejudiced. Well, sure, you’re absolutely right, and you’re also right that black people are lazy and complaining not because of race but because of culture from the slavery days. for the literalists out there, i’m being ironic.
also, it’s interesting that the obama waffles were being sold at the Values Voters Summit. I would think that people with “values” worth caring about would be against that kind of thing, but i guess not. so, “obama waffles” being sold at a conservative/republican gathering proves that liberal and leftists are the real racist fascists right?
October 24th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Are these actual, real live dobbs fans that have infested this post? That’s fascinating. They should be kept under glass and studied.
October 24th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Brad, do you reallly think that a caricature of Barack Obama involves popping eyes and big white teeth?
October 25th, 2009 at 12:12 am
Personally, what strikes me about the Obama waffles is that they seem to be off-message to me. Waffles are a symbol, most associated with John Kerry, of indecisiveness, lack of political conviction, and equivocation. The right-wing party line on Obama is that he is anything but a waffler — that, on the contrary, he is a hardline, ideological socialist who seeks to destroy the free-enterprise system that made America great and saddle our grandchildren with a stack of unpayable debts. I’m not sure what food best represents that.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:31 am
Julian, they are obama waffles because black people (according to stereotypes) like waffles. It doesn’t go beyond that.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:32 am
(Dobbs does have substantial disagreements with Obama)
Uh, no, Popeye. Birtherish visceral emnity != “disagreements”.
It’s funny, though, to look at how the fucker has morphed. For a while, it was protectionist Dobbs who vented about companies that outsourced jobs while praising them in his subscribers-only tipsheet; then it became nativist Dobbs frothing about Mexicans and “Communist China”; now that’s seasoned with birtherism and teabaggage and market-fundamentalist bullshit.
They should be kept under glass and studied.
Oh, I just propose giving them the citizenship and English aptitude test and publishing the results. For shits and giggles.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:39 am
I think the concern is that the waffle thing is maybe also an allusion to Aunt Jemima Waffles.
Completely off topic, but C-SPAN is on in the corner, & God as my witness, I just heard Jonah Goldberg, holding forth at an Accuracy in Media conference, accuse liberals of thinking their opponents are not just wrong but bad. A fascist, he quips, is a conservative who’s winning the argument. Yes, a fascist. He goes on to breezily sum up metaphysics, epistemology, & eschatology.
That man is sublime.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:40 am
“Instead, they just kind of want to sweep the crazy uncle under the rug for the purposes of a big special, and then trot him back out again when everything’s back to normal.”
Well durr. That’s what we white folks always do.
For the common case, we routinely say things of the form “it’s just a few bad apples”, and then self-servingly forget all about whatever the incident was when things have quieted down.
It’s our *standard* m.o.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:48 am
many working Americans are concerned with the disproportionate costs (in terms of social services and communicable diseases) that rogue illegals are imposing on the economy.
Indeed, many working Native Americans made the same complaint about the inept plague-ridden fuckers who showed up from nowhere, started stealing things or begging for food, and popped out dirty anchor babies as soon as they could. And look what happened to the Native Americans.
Or, to put it another way, “THEY TUK ARR JURBS” has been sung for a long fucking time by the ladder-pulling descendants of the last crop of rogue illegals.
October 25th, 2009 at 1:39 am
The waffles thing seems like a riff on Aunt Jemima pancake batter, no?
October 25th, 2009 at 1:44 am
Or, to put it another way, “THEY TUK ARR JURBS” has been sung for a long fucking time by the ladder-pulling descendants of the last crop of rogue illegals.
True, given that we invaded what was the Native Americans’ land, we must let others do the same to us.
You know, just like we shouldn’t try to stop rape because most of us have ancestors who were conceived during a rape.
October 25th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Do you actually think Mexican illegal immigrants are going to take over? If so, your life is just pathetic.
October 25th, 2009 at 3:15 am
“I just heard Jonah Goldberg, holding forth at an Accuracy in Media conference, accuse liberals of thinking their opponents are not just wrong but bad.”
Hey, that’s a coincidence, Al says that all the time.
…
…wait a minute…
October 25th, 2009 at 3:46 am
Well first of all, they tend to talk non stop about how they are doing just that. Second of all, absolutely they will take over the areas where they numerically dominate. Which is fine with me. I’d gladly give up Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California if it meant we could get rid of the brown “people” who live there as well.
October 25th, 2009 at 7:56 am
It must make you proud to count Dobbs as a fellow Harvard alum.
October 25th, 2009 at 8:14 am
@24 How do you know what illegal Mexicans are talking about since the extent of your Spanish is Donde están los putos?
October 25th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Hmmm, was that a gay bashing joke? Why do you Hispanics hate gays so much?
October 25th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I think Dobbs is a subliterate racist who should be fired. But what’s racist about the waffles box? At least here he doesn’t have a bone through his nose. It seems like straightforward political satire, only not funny. Is Obama above satire now? With so much real racism about, do we have to invent episodes to complain about?
October 25th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Dobbs has a long history of spreading hate and paranoia. He has routinely discussed the North American Union conspiracy theory, incorrectly claimed that undocumented immigrants drain social services and don’t pay taxes, and repeatedly amplified the falsehood that undocumented immigrants are disproportionately violent
Are you telling me that there are not a lot of illegal aliens who are paid under the table? We of course are ignoring here the drain that poor illegal aliens produce on hospitals.
We are also ignoring the bigger point. A lot of the crime and welfare issues come not from illegal aliens, but from their citizen children. Latinos are, on average, more likely to get into legal trouble, and are more likely to use government services than whites or Asians. So letting in illegal immigrants will, long-term, have the effect of making cirme higher than it would be otherwise, and of darining social services, even of the immigrants themselves do not do these things.
(And of course, all of these statements about illegal aliens not being eligible for different services ignore the fact that most of the “comprehensive immigration reform” that the pro-immigration side wants is about making them eligible. So all these supposed benefits of illegal aliens are the things that their side wants to stop).
October 25th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
The very fact that CNN, and Dobbs defenders like Newt at comment 1, have to whitewash his statements in order to defend him from charges of racism demonstrates just how disreputable he is.
Even his supporters don’t want to accurately state what the man says.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
“incorrectly claimed that undocumented immigrants drain social services and don’t pay taxes”
I don’t think Lou Dobbs is saying that illegal immigrants aren’t indirectly forced to pay taxes. I believe (and I believe Lou Dobbs believes) that llegal immigrants came to this country, were allowed to start legitimate businesses doing construction, cleaning, etc, and then didn’t pay a dime of taxes on the income from those businesses. Nothing in your link changes my opinion.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
It’s difficult to avoid thoughts of racism when someone equates the violent conquest of a society’s land, the indiscriminate killing of its people, the establishment of a new government by the invaders which rules over the former residents, and the other atrocities and aggression committed against American Indians by European settlers with…you know…a family moving next door that has slighter darker skin, spicier food, and stronger accents than you.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
I’m still waiting for the free-marketeers to come riding up en mass to rescue this issue: if a man is willing to offer his services to a willing employer, then proceeds to live peacefully, consume goods, pay rent, taxes, etc., why should he not be allowed to?
Assuming there is no nativist racism going on, the issue comes down to drain on the economy. But those economics get pretty dicey.
Sure, wages might be pulled down, but that money gets put back into the economy when spent. And what percentage of it really gets sent back home? I mean, these are LOW wage jobs – barely subsistence level.
And how many of these jobs aren’t simply additive to the economy – that is, services that wouldn’t be worth paying legal prices for. For instance, having to pay double to get your lawn cut. Or if a cheaper dishwasher means cheaper menu items, thus more customers.
Now we’re talking about economic stimulus! Heck, like I said this all gets real dicey.
October 25th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
To be fair, it was pseudonymous who brought the issue up. Given that Americans underwent rather severe adverse consequences due to the British invasion of the 1600s, and large swathes of the country even lost their political independence to foreign colonial powers between 1621 and the War of Independence concluding in 1783, it is an analogy which seems best suited for nativist arguments if it is to be brought up in immigration debates at all.
I never knew there was a stereotype about black people liking waffles. I just made some fresh waffles this morning. I thought that the stereotypically African American foods were more fried chicken, collard greens, and watermelon. I don’t know, though.
October 25th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
To be fair, it was pseudonymous who brought the issue up.
Well, the standard rebuttal to the TUK ARR JERBS crowd is to note that the same refrain was heard 150 years ago from the Know-Nothings towards the ancestors of Pat Buchanan, Tom Tancredo and other ladder-pulling “white ethnics”. But it clearly didn’t start with the Know-Nothings, and you have to wonder the extent to which nativist animus is basically a function of immigrant assimilation, i.e. you know you’ve arrived when you start to complain about the foreigners.
Point being that if even if you trace your ancestry back to the Mayflower, then you’re still the descendent of land-grabbing, disease-carrying invaders. (Hence my link: Popeye’s paymasters celebrate the first anchor baby.) But for someone to make a serious comparison between the treatment of Native Americans and the consequences of Hispanic immigration is clearly pathologically absurd.
I believe (and I believe Lou Dobbs believes)
I believe you’re projecting. Dobbs has shown a willingness to conflate legal and illegal immigration, an unwillingness to show the slightest bit of engagement with the dysfunctional state of immigration law and bureaucracy in the US, and has an inclination to play footsie with those fuelled more by nativist animus than concern over illegal immigration — i.e. the English-only brigade, and more recently, the Birfers.
October 25th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
On the other hand, we’ve learned at this point that enforcing immigration restrictions pulls wages down even more, by creating an easily-exploitable subculture of workers who can be threatened by their bosses and who cannot easily get other jobs.
Always remember, the effect of government prohibition, whether we’re talking about liquor, pot, immigration, or whatever, isn’t the disappearance of the prohibited thing and the benefits that would accrue if it never existed. Rather, the effect of prohibition on something that is widespread is simply to create a black market, and black markets have all sorts of side effects.
October 25th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
That’s stupid. Everyone knows the best way to deal with the negative side effects of government prohibition is to stick your fingers in your ears and yell “LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA!”
October 25th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
YOU are so full of shit, dobbs is one of the best, really trying to do the right thing, and he brings up the mexican problem cuz it is a serious problem just like the problem with immagration in general. cheers
October 25th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias gives us several reasons why Lou Dobbs is a card-carrying member of a (mostly) marginalized, backward thinking segment of [...]
October 25th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
I don’t like collard greens but I am down with fried chicken and watermelon. Southrn white boy said that.
PS I like peas cabbage ribs pork chops and the list grows, but I am not fond of waffles. Pan cakes are cool. Coffee is good.
Thanks yall
October 25th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
#38? See #16, particularly the last sentence.
October 25th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
From an article posted at PubMed:
Leprosy endemic in northeastern US? But not so much in Mexico.
Where do these under-the-rocks commentors come from, that they don’t know about teh Google? And that they hold other groups of people in such disdain. Such as mister Otis-the-sweaty who calls Mexicans “brown ‘people’ ” in scare quotes?
I canstannit that Matt Y is so tolerant of disgusting “free speech.” Matt, your blog is so good, so wide ranging, but it’s hard to read the comments whenever you use the word “race” in a post. Reason and civility go out the window.
October 25th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
My point is, if you’re going to defend nuclear power, bringing up Chernobyl seems like an odd way to do it. If you’re going to defend immigration to the US, it seems likewise odd to bring up the Mayflower. One might qualify this by saying that, hey, a well regulated nuclear power plant won’t end up like Chernobyl, and that current immigration isn’t like the Mayflower, but this is something of a strange approach to actually defending the practices in question.
October 25th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
I would like to see Matt use a little more discretion in the comments he allows to post sometimes.
“It can’t be racist, because black people really are like that!” Yeah, thanks, I’m so glad I read that important insight.
October 26th, 2009 at 1:12 am
If you’re going to defend immigration to the US, it seems likewise odd to bring up the Mayflower.
I’m mainly pointing out that there’s a correlation between the cultural elements perceived as being dominant or most intrinsically “American” and the sets of immigrants that did the most to lay waste to what was there before they arrived. Which, if you think about it, is not that surprising. History also suggests that such wholesale ethno-cultural takeovers generally require fairly drastic amounts of slaughter and pillage in short spaces of time, and that absent that, you get from “No Irish Need Apply” to Pat Buchanan in the course of a few generations.
(Glaivester’s piss-weak argument is further undermined by his celebration of a website that, to use his analogy, is called mygreatgreatgrandmasrapist.com.)
Anyway, Matt opened the door to Popeye, and it stays open for Popeye’s little friends, who don’t quite have his knack of disengaging their lizard-brains from their typing fingers.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:10 am
[...] @ In his piece, The Dobbs Factor, blogger Matt Yglesias writes: Immigrants Rally In Lou Dobbs Masks“Dobbs has a long history [...]
October 26th, 2009 at 2:33 am
I don’t think Lou Dobbs is saying that illegal immigrants aren’t indirectly forced to pay taxes. I believe (and I believe Lou Dobbs believes) that llegal immigrants came to this country, were allowed to start legitimate businesses doing construction, cleaning, etc, and then didn’t pay a dime of taxes on the income from those businesses. Nothing in your link changes my opinion.
Because we all know that it’s so easy to operate without a business or contractors license and not get caught and to get all kinds of social services without any kind of ID, social security number or a stolen SS number that has the name of “Joe Smith” when a person can’t speak english. Am I right people?
I don’t where this dreamland exists where there are hoards of officials on the city, county, state and federal level who all hate to collect license fees, taxes and check people’s bona-fides and are complicit undocumented workers in some kind of amorphous plot that involves undocumented workers “taking over” but wherever it is it must be pretty damn fun because then racists could have points that at least seem based in reality and at least there could be a remote chance for a legitimate debate on posts like these.
But instead we have circle-jerks like these where issues involving real people and real lives are treated as intellectual one-ups-man-ship ans all the while racists can just sit here and whine about shit that isn’t even happening except in the mind of some two-bit cable news propagandist.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:51 am
And it’s also kinda funny that the people who start bringing the old “illegals aren’t paying taxes” trope usually aren’t really out there on the war path against corporations who lobby congress to dodge their own taxes and aren’t out there on a street coroner giving out fliers raging against private individuals who cheat the IRS in general. All of this passionate concern just comes pouring when one type of “tax cheating” is discussed involving brown people.
Interesting that all of rage and concern surrounding the “effects of illegal immigration” like crime, drugs, taxes, housing, poverty etc. aren’t so important when these issues are discussed independant of the big bagaboo they love to whine about.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
When I go to the gym on weeknights, I have to take off my glasses when I’m on the treadmill because otherwise I’m forced to stare at Dobbs and his fake hair yammering about how awful things are. I’ve tried just staring at the screens with ESPN on but that giant orange dome just keeps drawing my attention the way a ranting drunk or a car wreck would. And so, I must run in a hazy, blurry world where paranoiacs and their laments are just fuzzy abstractions. Thanks, Lou.