We’ve commented on Lou Dobbs’ biased coverage of immigration illegal and otherwise here previously, noting in the print version of FrontBurner (Feb. ‘07) that the influential anchor has “reinvented an entire CNN career as the media’s point man on the subject.” A couple of weeks ago, Dobbs, who has brought his road show to Dallas, appeared on “60 Minutes.” Among other things, he refused to back down from the lie he had perpetuated that illegal migrants had spiked leprosy cases in the U.S. to 7,000 in the past three years. The Southern Poverty Law Center called him on it, and he responded by attacking them. Now, the Gray Lady concludes that the SPLC was right and Dobbs was wrong. And more.
One of the tactics Dobbs uses that the NYT story didn’t mention is his careful salting of audiences with his supporters, and his almost Jerry Springer-like baiting of guests who oppose him. In a town hall appearance in San Antonio last year, Dobbs flew in a number of supporters to sit in the front row of the audience, using them to back up his points. As for the opponents that sat far too politely, he resorted to ridicule and theatrical umbrage when they challenged his point. He dismissively told Rosa Rosales, national president of LULAC, that he wouldn’t even discuss the possibility of racism in the anti-immigrant movement. Dobbs brusquely interrupted the comments of a lawyer for MALDEF, generally ignoring any substantive questioning of immigration issues that did not track the fear-mongering style.
The importance of challenging Dobbs on issues such as leprosy is that he uses his show to create a powerful but untrue fiction — a simulacrum, to use a word from Critical Theory — linking illegal immigration with homeland security, the drug trade, and deterioration of American working class life. Very little of it bears close analysis economically, and a good deal of it, as the NYT story says, is full of errors that compound themselves. No wonder it’s difficult for viewers in Dallas, Farmers Branch and elsewhere to get a true picture of the role of the new migrant economy (which our Feb. ‘07 story attempted to provide). I won’t go so far as to suggest, as John Prine once did, that you “blow up your TV,” but I would advise changing the channel.