Lou Dobbs unhinged and uncensored!

When I last paid attention to Lou Dobbs, he was giving voice to birther conspiracy theories and going on increasingly hostile diatribes about illegal immigrants.  For this he was paid a generous severance package (rumored to be in the range of $8 million) by CNN .

That was in November.  But Dobbs hasn’t simply dropped off the airwaves.  He has a nationally syndicated radio show on the United Stations Radio Network which, as reflected by his guest-list today, allows him to finally speak his mind and surround himself with the type of people who presumably he was listening to when his implosion at CNN began last year.

Today his website read:

Joining Lou on Tuesday will be STEVE EMERSON, Executive Director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, discusses (sic) the attempted terrorism attack on New York City and the latest developments in that case. BOB DANE, spokesperson for FAIR(Freedom (sic) for American Immigration Reform)looks at the latest news involving the Arizona immigration law, Obama’s response, and where we go from here. And PAMELA GELLER, editor and publisher at Atlas Shrugs, offers her insight on the near terrorist attack in New York City, what organizations were involved, and what happens now.

Dobbs has really outdone himself by putting together a trifecta of discredited and fringe voices.

Steve Emerson is a well known “terror expert” who has a long history of faulty analysis, anti-Muslim bias and hyping the threat of domestic Islamic terror cells.

He is best known for his assertion after the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing that the attack showed “a Middle Eastern trait”.

I couldn’t find a group called Freedom for American Immigration Reform but the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) employs a communications director named Bob Dane.

FAIR has a history of receiving money from white supremacist groups and was labeled a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in 2007.

Finally, Pamela Geller is one of the more crazy voices from the far-right blogosphere.

She has attended events in Belgium which were sponsored by Nazi sympathizing organizations, vocally endorsed the British National Party and has been an early propagator of the birther conspiracy theory movement.

In some of her more outlandish blog posts she has asserted that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child and that when Obama visited Pakistan in the early 1980s he, “went for the drugs and came back with jihad.”

It’s possible that Lou Dobbs has become more unhinged since he left CNN last fall but it seems more likely than not that he is finally being allowed to speak freely.

CNN may have known that Lou Dobbs would be an increasingly costly liability.

Eli Clifton

Eli Clifton reports on money in politics and US foreign policy. He is a co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Eli previously reported for the American Independent News Network, ThinkProgress, and Inter Press Service.

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One Comment

  1. The SPLC labels every immigration restriction organization a “hate group.”
    FAIR has had lots of mainstream people on its board. I know one of their officials said something borderline racist about twenty years ago, boo hoo.
    I agree that Emmerson and Geller are completely nuts.

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