ALIPAC Dumps Dobbs
Looks like Lou Dobbs is losing fans all around this week. Southern Poverty Law Center’s Larry Keller posted this piece on SPLC’s HateWatch blog yesterday.
Lou Dobbs and Americans for Legal Immigration – ALIPAC – are divorcing, and the parting isn’t amicable. ALIPAC President William Gheen has notified supporters that his organization has withdrawn its support of Dobbs and suspended two websites promoting the former CNN showman for president.
In a lengthy E-mail, the heartsick nativist said it was “painful” to realize he misjudged Dobbs, and that ALIPAC hopes to “put this painful episode behind us.” Gheen added contritely, “We apologize to our supporters for being wrong about Dobbs.”It was a TV interview Dobbs did Nov. 20 on Telemundo’s Al Rojo Vivo that tore the bloom off the ALIPAC-Dobbs romance. Dobbs told interviewer Maria Celeste that “we need the ability to legalize illegal immigrants under certain conditions” and proclaimed himself one of the Latino’s community’s “greatest friends.” Read more
Lou Dobbs Eyeing Public Office?
Joshua Holland at AlterNet posted this fantastic article on Thursday, Lou Dobbs, Eyeing Public Office, Endorses Policy He’s Long Spun as “Amnesty for Illegals”.
First, under pressure from above, Lou Dobbs gave up on the birther conspiracy theories.
Then he said that perhaps he’d been wrong to assert that illegal immigrants were spreading leprosy far and wide across the U.S. (or at least he claims to have said he’d been wrong).
And now, in the ultimate betrayal of the faux-populist shtick he’s been riding all these years, Dobbs told Telemundo (in an interview caught by the Wall Street Journal) that he now favors the very legalization process for immigrants living here illegally that he’s long derided as a brain-dead “amnesty” policy pushed by pernicious liberal elites in order to keep down the wages of good, hardworking Americans. Read more
Gary Shapiro: Reflections on Lou Dobbs’ Turbulent Departure
Shapiro posted this great piece on Huffington Post, making sure the coffin on Lou Dobbs’ mainstream media career is nailed shut for good.
Lou Dobbs quickly and unexpectedly announced his resignation from CNN this week, terminating his reported multi-year contract with the cable network. I have been calling publicly for months for CNN to stop putting Dobbs on the air, so I think it worthwhile to reflect for a moment on why his resignation was the right decision.
Although some have decried CNN’s censorship of a self-labeled opinionated voice, I reject that notion. First and foremost, I am a champion of the First Amendment. The Media Institute, a non-profit organization that includes CNN and many other major news outlets as supporters, recently honored me with their annual First Amendment award for my work in championing free speech.
I believe free speech includes the right to be heard, but not everyone has a right to his or her own television show. Lou Dobbs exploited his position as a news anchor with his own nightly show and used it as a platform to advance his xenophobic and anti-business agenda. Now that he has lost that platform, he can pitch an op-ed as readily as anyone else can – and indeed his opinions belong somewhere other than on a serious news network. Read more
Roundup: Lou Dobbs Off the Air
www.americasvoiceonline.org
Here at Imagine 2050 we are so excited about this development, we decided to share posts from across the blogosphere.
First up is this post from Nezua, Weekly Diaspora: Deporting Dobbs:
After 30 years, commentator Lou Dobbs—infamous for his tirades against undocumented immigrants—has left CNN, as TPM reports. Dobbs employed disturbing, dangerous, and dated language to slur immigrants, often equating them with disease and infection. There is a connection between this type of demagoguery and violence.
Clearly, the organizing efforts of groups like Basta Dobbs have borne fruit, as even Dobbs admits. GRITtv recently covered the “way the mainstream media equates ‘Latino’ with ‘immigrant.’” and Latino organizing efforts to correct this perspective.
“Over the past six months, it’s become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country, and affecting all of us,” Dobbs said in his last live broadcast for CNN. Other commentators belonging to the old school of racist separatism ought take note. It’s a new day in the USA.
Read the entire post at theunapologeticmexican.org/elmachete
Bastadobbs.com released this statement on its blog yesterday:
“Our contention all along was that Lou Dobbs – who has a long record of spreading lies and conspiracy theories about immigrants and Latinos – does not belong on the ‘Most Trusted Name in News,’” said Roberto Lovato, co-founder of Presente.org, a national online advocacy organization coordinating the BastaDobbs.com campaign in conjunction with more than 40 local and regional Latino organizations from across the country. “We are thrilled that Dobbs no longer has this legitimate platform from which to incite fear and hate.” Read more
CNN Finally Drops Dobbs
National civil rights organization, Center for New Community, and a partner in the Drop Dobbs Campaign, released this statement today regarding Dobbs’ resignation.
Yesterday Lou Dobbs announced his departure from CNN effective immediately. His abrupt announcement comes amid mounting pressure from civil and human rights organizations concerned about Dobbs’ blatant use of hate speech.
“Lou Dobbs’ departure is a long-overdue turning point for CNN,” said Rev. David Ostendorf, Executive Director of the Center for New Community, “Only now can the American public trust the network to fairly and accurately report the news.” Read more
Time for CNN to Drop Kick Dobbs
I once went to see Lou Dobbs speak at a book signing. Ok, so really I went there because I heard about a protest at the Lou Dobbs book signing. The protest (in which i did not participate) was civil and for the most part kept outside the Barnes & Noble Bookstore where he was appearing. Who showed up to actually hear him speak quickly became more fascinating. All the local racists seemed to have crawled out of their mothers’ basements for Lou Dobbs night. There were the eager beaver minutemen (and women) front and center. The slightly gothic racists skulking in the back. And of course the shrieking, foaming at the mouth fan who got fed up with Lou’s dilly dallying and started screaming, “They’re not white! They’re not the same! They’re not one of us!” over and over again. And I’m not kidding, this guy was literally foaming.
Lou was fairly polished that night, he only flipped out once or twice. Of course, it was directed to the soft-spoken pastor who dared to mention humanitarian issues, not the foaming racist.
It could have been a cult gathering or a Brangelina sighting from where I was sitting. I couldn’t figure out what was creepier, Lou’s pitch-perfect Dick Clark-wannabe charm, or the strange assortment of bigots staring up at him in adoration. The funny thing was, Dobbs didn’t seem the least bit concerned. I mean these were the types of toxic personalities most of us spend a lifetime avoiding, and Lou Dobbs looked right at home. Read more
Lou Dobbs: Perspective on a Piker
What more is to be said about Lou Dobbs? Bigot. Well-paid bigot. Anti-immigrant shill for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and its kind. Birther bloviator. Cash cow for CNN. The list is endless.
What is seldom said is that he is a piker, a small potato, “a person who does anything in a contemptibly small or cheap way” compared to the granddaddy of hate broadcasting, Father Charles E. Coughlin, whose radio diatribes in the 1930s set the gold standard for the airwaves.
A Michigan priest who first supported Roosevelt and was outspoken on behalf of exploited workers, Coughlin took a turn in 1934 and began denouncing the President as a socialist (sound familiar?). He tapped deep wells into American nativism (sound familiar?), gave new life to a vicious brand of anti-Semitism (sound familiar?), and eventually became a mouthpiece for the principles of the Third Reich. Read more
In Seven Days You Can Help Defeat Anti-Immigrant Bigotry
On August 28, Cindy Carcamo of the Orange County Register wrote an insightful article called Groups mobilize for the next immigration battle. The article quotes Barbara Coe a member of the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens. Coe has referred to Mexicans as “savages” and immigrants as “barbarians.”
As I sat down to write, I initially thought that I should use this blog to blast Barbara Coe for her relationship to organized racism. However, while I was pondering what to write I received a phone call from an old high school friend, Pam, who had read the same article.
Pam was spitting mad and wanted to know what she could do. She is a mother of two and works sixty hours a week as a florist. “I don’t want these bigots to have the last word,” she said to me as I heard her daughter in the background asking if she could have some juice. “I want to take their lemons and turn them into lemonade . . . so tell me what I can do Eric, but remember I don’t have a lot of time!”
I agree with Pam. Time is of the essence and we should use it wisely. Instead of writing what I think of anti-immigrant bigotry I’ve decided to use this week to take action. Below I’ve outlined an action for each day of the week. You can take a bite out of bigotry in less than five minutes a day! Let’s all join together and redeem the soul of America!
Write me and let me know how it went and what you thought. If you come up with your own list be sure to share it here at the Imagine 2050 blog as well. Print this post and pin it up on your wall, desk, or fridge. Read more
Child Killer Represented National Anti-Immigrant Group
Brisenia Flores was too young to die. At nine years-old her life was cut short by bullets fired at the hands of anti-immigrant activists—individuals who had been instructed by a larger movement that the United States was being invaded. For years alleged pundits like Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin have sold this racial fantasy to the American public and now a nine-year old girl has paid the ultimate price.
For Shawna Forde (41), Jason Bush (34), and Albert Gaxiola (42) Brisenia was not just a young child with her whole life ahead of her, instead she and her family were forced against their will into a world where they became part of an alleged “foreign army” whose lives held no worth. Read more
A Stunning Denial of Justice in Shenandoah
While the world was glued to flu coverage last week, justice crumbled in tiny Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. The tragedy began almost a year ago when Luis E. Ramirez was beaten to death by a group of white male teenagers. Reports of the attack describe it as racially-motivated and brutal. A report by CNN stated, “After a night of drinking, the teens taunted the undocumented worker with racial epithets, pummeled him to the ground and then kicked him in the head, court documents charge. He died in a hospital two days later.”
The trial for two of Ramirez’s attackers ended on Friday when Derrick Donchak, 19, and Brandon Piekarsky, 17, were acquitted of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and ethnic intimidation. Attorneys for the two attackers argued that Ramirez was in fact the aggressor against the four intoxicated teens. Right. Anyway, the all-white jury seemed to find that pretty plausible and only found Donchak and Pierkarsky guilty of simple assault. Everything about this story, from the investigation to the trial, stinks of old-fashioned collusion, cover-up, and bigotry. Read more
Anti-Immigrant to Blacks: Go back to Africa
While separated by a span of two hundred years, Dan Stein the president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the American Colonization Society (ACS) founded in 1816 have something in common. They both want blacks to go back to Africa.
Most of Liberia’s political struggles today are the result of ACS, a U.S. organization that finally shut its doors in 1964. Last Friday the Associated Press reported that Liberia’s democratically elected president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf told a Minnesota audience that “. . . the country is making great progress on rebuilding infrastructure, debt relief and education after a 14-year civil war.”
The United States should celebrate this progress, not by turning our backs on a country we helped to create, but by supporting Liberia’s move towards a multi-ethnic democratic society. We accomplish this by supporting those black refugees among us, not forcing them out of the United States into a country that is not yet completely stable. Read more
The Good, the Bad, and the McCain Campaign
I was on a plane to NYC when I heard the news. John McCain chose a woman as his Vice Presidential pick. My boyfriend turned to look at me with a little bit of panic in his eyes. He was afraid that McCain had performed some master stroke of genius and was going to lock down the Hillary Clinton women. As he watched the CNN ticker roll, he gave me a play by play.
“She has five kids!” “She has a son in the army!” “She has a kid with Down Syndrome!” I think he imagined millions of mini-vans, tires squealing, as soccer moms from all over America rushed polling stations on election day to vote for their sister in Alaska. Read more
The Political Center Is Not Where It Seems
I have an addiction and I’m going to tell you what it is.
I’m addicted to CNN (Cable News Network). I love CNN and watch it constantly. Something has always fascinated me about 24-hour news coverage. When CNN started its second news channel nearly a decade ago I was elated because I could flip between channels with my remote control and really get continuous news, but I digress. When read more
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