Not Everyone Likes Lou Dobbs

CNN's Lou Dobbs has spent the last couple of years "reporting" on illegal immigration and the impact he perceives on the economy and on employment. Recently he extended his coverage to include the issue of whether the undocumented should be allowed to have state-issued drivers' licenses as proposed by Gov. Spitzer of New York. His diatribe did not go unnoticed by those viewers of CNN's international feed. From Colombia's El Tiempo

More or less a month ago, the governor of the State of New York, Eliot Spitzer, announced that for reasons of public safety, he would permit the one million undocumented workers living there to apply for a driver license.

Furious about Spitzer’s announcement, CNN news announcer Lou Dobbs - whose anti-immigrant phobia seems to have no bounds - began a ferocious daily campaign against the governor’s proposal. The confrontation turned personal when forgetting himself, Dobbs called Spitzer an “idiot,” and invited him to a debate.

The governor’s office issued a terse statement declining the invitation, writing that Dobbs “has demonstrated quite clearly that he isn't interested in serious debate.” A more than reasonable response given the bellicose nature of the TV broadcaster.

The issue, however, is not the insolence of a man who uses xenophobic, protectionist, anti-immigrant messages against Latin American countries to affirm his vulgar patriotism. The issue is the strength of Spitzer's argument that denying a driver's license to undocumented immigrants is an affront to public safety. ...

What I find unacceptable is that CNN permits an obsessed man like Lou Dobbs to participate in news coverage that demands impartial, objective, non-partisan journalists, as do for example, elections. CNN should confine Dobbs to a program called The Hour of Chauvinism, because this would help us all distinguish between reason and its absence. [Emphasis added]

Ouch, that's gotta leave a mark!

Apparently Sergio Muñoz Bata, the author of the op-ed piece, hasn't watched any Fox News or Sunday Morning talk shows or he would have noticed the decided lack of professional journalism in much of US television news. I suspect it was for that reason that Gov. Spitzer declined Mr. Dobbs' invitation to a "debate." Wise move, that.