I believe that Lou Dobbs' exchange with Telemundo's Maria Celeste proves only one thing: Celeste is an idiot. [Video]
For 20 of their 25 minutes session, Celeste berated Dobbs for misconstruing the statistics on immigrants with leprosy (he told her he made on an-air correction); his defense of Sheriff Joe Arpaio (Dobbs pointed out that Sheriff Joe had not been convicted of "civil rights abuses", as suggested by Celeste); and his references to percentages of incarcerated illegal aliens.
As for the interpretation widely circulating throughout the internet that Dobbs now favors amnesty, that would be the most extreme conclusion any viewer could come to.
Dobbs said, without elaborating on his remark, that under certain circumstances he would favor amnesty. My interpretation: Dobbs means that if the border were successfully secured, he might support amnesty, depending on how the legislation were written.
That is what Dobbs has been saying for years: there can't be meaningful "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" without secure borders.
I do admit that Dobbs was foolishly apologetic about not speaking Spanish. But he's been soft on the language issue before.
So don't ruin your Thanksgiving weekend by worrying about what Dobbs says or whether he's changed his mind. Remember my recent advice: Accentuate the positive; eliminate the negative!
Simply by reporting the facts, Dobbs' served the cause of patriotic immigration reform well, if not ideally, for many years.
But he was never as tough or as radical as his opponents claimed. And now he's passed his peak. In future, he won't be any more influential than, say, La Raza's Janet Murguia. Specifically, I don't believe he's going to run for office—or bother to find a new TV perch. The real story: the Treason Lobby's ululations about Lou Dobbs' recent departure from CNN proves how desperate they are.
Consider the entirety of the Dobbs saga: A gang of ethnic identity pressure groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (known to VDARE.COM as the $PLC), the National Council of La Raza and LULAC joined forces with another dozen or so groups of immigration lawyers. Their aggregate bankroll is somewhere in the range of $500 million.
Then, the immigration anarchists approached another liberal organization, CNN, which is a prominent part of the Main Stream Media, yet which is really just one more left-wing sub-group.
Finally—"after years", to use the exact words spoken by La Raza's chief comrade Janet Murguia—they succeeded in browbeating CNN into giving Dobbs an ultimatum: to tone down his illegal immigration criticism or to leave.
Dobbs took his $8 million and left.
This is what the other side describes as a victory?
Dozens of deep-pocket groups in tandem with anti-free speech agitators and defenders of criminal behavior like La Raza, the Anti-Defamation League and the $PLC took "years" to convince its ally CNN that Dobbs needed a good talking to? (Check the interesting organizations that wanted Dobbs out here.)
And to seal this deal, CNN had to shell out $8 million?
I wonder: if Murguia (who has not advanced her amnesty agenda one inch during her tenure as president and chief executive officer) were offered $8 million to leave La Raza, would she take it? [The 2010 Agenda Shifts, The Hill, November 17, 2009]
Short answer: yes.
Since our opponents have been unable "for years" to get an amnesty bill through Congress, and, with conventional wisdom now projecting that 2011 is the earliest date that so-called "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" might be brought up for debate, they have little else to crow about—except beating up on Dobbs.
Their transparent trumpeting (aka fund-raising ploy), in absence of a more a substantive achievement, reveals their weakness.
Here's why I'm not devastated by Dobbs' departure:
First, Dobbs hasn't gone anywhere. He still has his radio broadcast, four uncensored hours, five days a week. [127 Days with Lou Dobbs, by Steven Rodrick, New York Magazine, November 20, 2009]
Second, I doubt if there's any new souls for Dobbs to convert to the cause of patriotic immigration reform.
Dobbs did a heroic job in raising awareness about illegal immigration. No doubt about it, Dobbs brought the consequences of illegal immigration to the forefront for millions of previously unaware viewers.
But is there anyone left to sway? The immigration debate is now solidly divided into two camps: those of us who favor enforcement and an immigration moratorium versus the Open Borders crowd.
Dobbs, even if he had unrestricted television time to speak as honestly as he wishes to, can't influence the other camp. They're too entrenched.
Third, Dobbs' show rarely mentioned legal immigration and its equally disastrous consequences. Once, outrageously, Dobbs even called for tripling legal immigration which would bring the annual legal immigration total to about 4.5 million.
Fourth, Dobbs' never mentioned the racial and cultural clashes that evolve from unsustainable immigration. And if Dobbs mentioned the catastrophic U.S. refugee policy, and the chain migration that follows refugees, mostly into small town America, I never heard it.
In fairness to Dobbs, I'm sure CNN really muzzled him on these verboten subjects.
Over the last several years, I drifted away from watching Dobbs' telecast. When I lived in California, it aired twice nightly, at 5:00 and 8:00 PM, Pacific. I made a point to catch one or the other.
Then, when Dobbs' show changed to once a night (7:00 PM) I TiVo-ed it. Sometimes, I watched the taped versions. But usually I deleted more than I watched.
Why?
Since I'm a VDARE.COM editor, most of Dobbs' material was already known to me. In fact, I often felt that many of his story lines originated, uncredited, from articles my colleagues wrote. Some segments, in fact, looked suspiciously familiar—as if they had their genesis in my very own columns!
Of course, we don't mind this at VDARE.COM. We think our role is to get ideas into the intellectual food chain regardless of credit—it's why we're a charity! But, for me, it didn't make compelling viewing.
What will be the fall-out from the Dobbs-CNN clash?
CNN already has egg on its face. While its excuse for squeezing Dobbs is that it wants to go more middle of the road, their most biased illegal aliens shills Soledad O'Brien and Rick Sanchez remain untouched.
Obviously, CNN's ratings will fall further into the pit. As controversial as Dobbs was, people watched. Suddenly, there's no audience. Too bad!
Speculation is that Dobbs will consider a run for the U.S. Senate or possibly enter the 2012 presidential race as a third party Independent. Some think Dobbs will join Fox News.
Dobbs himself remains evasive:
"I am ruling nothing out. ... I have come to no conclusions and no decisions. Do I seek to have some influence on public policy? Absolutely. Do I seek to represent and champion the middle class in this country and those who aspire to it? Absolutely. And I will." [Newsman Lou Dobbs Mulls Run for White House, Senate, by Steve Gorman and Todd Eastham, Reuters, November 19, 2009]
My prediction: Dobbs will not seek elective office or go back to TV. He just put $8 million in the bank. He can now sit back to enjoy his country estate and write more books.
Why should Dobbs sacrifice his comfortable life for a bruising, multimillion dollar Senate campaign or an even more grueling presidential bid?
More importantly, elective office is not where Dobbs could do the most good. A junior Senator from New Jersey has one vote only.
Dobbs would be more effective as a roving free agent, who could appear at various nationwide 2010 House and Senate campaigns to support candidates who embrace the same principles he's always espoused: enforcing federal immigration laws, securing America's borders, ending outsourcing and restoring the middle class through job creation.
Dobbs on the road could make the difference in dozens of elections.
And maybe along the way, Dobbs will feel liberated enough from his CNN censors to call for an immigration moratorium—something, despite record unemployment, that he, along with (in this case) the rest of the media elite, has mysteriously failed to do.
Joe Guzzardi [email him] is a California native who recently fled the state because of over-immigration, over-population and a rapidly deteriorating quality of life. He has moved to Pittsburgh, PA where the air is clean and the growth rate stable. A long-time instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, Guzzardi has been writing a weekly column since 1988. It currently appears in the Lodi News-Sentinel.
