Dobbs out at CNN
By Max J. Castro
At last, at CNN Lou Dobbs is history. He has lost his platform. For years, Dobbs has poisoned the air waves. Over the last five years, Dobbs has mercilessly attacked immigrants on his cable show virtually every night. Latinos have increasingly protested his xenophobic diatribes and biases to little effect.
Now, Dobbs has quit or been fired. It isn’t clear the role of Latino protest. CNN has been fighting and often losing the ratings war against Fox and MSNBC. It’s evident that CNN strategy is trying to fight back by positioning itself as the “objective” hard news network in the middle between Fox on the right and MSNBC on the left. If you don’t think so, watch the commercials for Campbell Brown. Dobbs highly opinionated rendering of the day’s news completely belied the new branding strategy.
A plethora of opinions on television is a good thing. But Dobbs was supposed to be a news show not an opinion fest. For a long time, his ratings and devoted following protected him. But finally, his habit of mixing news with virulence was too much for CNN. He was given a choice: cool it or quit. He quit.
Latinos and progressives in general should celebrate this victory. However, it would be foolish to imagine we have seen the end of Dobbs or his brand of bigotry. There are already rumors that Dobbs may move over to the Fox business channel, but it has a miniscule audience. More importantly, there are many Lou Dobbs out there who are full of hatred. Indeed, hate crimes against Latinos have been increasing in the last few years. The economic crisis exacerbates the problem.
It is ironic that some of those who exploit the immigration issue are Latinos. Marco Rubio, a Cuban American running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Florida, has come out with a hardline stance against undocumented immigrants. Unlike the outgoing Mel Martinez, another Cuban American, Rubio opposes any kind of amnesty for undocumented immigrants, which would be a component of any comprehensive immigration reform. Rubio never proposed cracking down on immigrants when he was a member of the Florida legislature. Now that he is running as a hardline conservative against moderate Republican Governor Charlie Crist, Rubio has become a hardliner on immigration.
The Lou Dobbs affair should send a message to pundits and politicians that when they demagogue the immigration issue, they are skinning on rapidly melting ice.
