Lou Dobbs, CNN’s Resident Racist, Falls Victim to Fearmongering Self

Isn’t it invariably true that the media wingnut Carney Criers trafficking in fear and hatred will eventually fall victim to their own self-inflicted irrational paranoia? Glenn Beck never leaves his bunker without an armed bodyguard. Talk radio racist Rush Limbaugh and CNN hater Lou Dobbs have taken similarly draconian measures.

After years of tolerating scurrilous, largely unanswered attacks on latino immigrants from Dobbs, the popular FOX TV tabloid personality Geraldo Rivera has finally had enough. Rivera fired a verbal broadside at Dobbs, blaming him for the “reckless beyond imagining, reckless beyond precedent … defamatory tone” of the immigration debate in this country, adding that Dobbs “is almost singlehandedly responsible for creating, for being the architect of the young-Latino-as-scapegoat for everything that ails this country.”

The slippery Dobbs, who probably viewed Rivera as a fellow traveler, since Rivera’s tabloid brand of sensationalism fits the Murdoch media profile to a T, was clearly rattled by the attack. Rivera is a conservative who appeals to a sizable swath of conservative Hispanic Americans, yes, but one issue that cuts across ideological lines among latinos in this country is immigration. This becomes evident considering that the only pro-Dobbs latinos on his show are so virulently right wing that their ethnic heritage is incidental and exceedingly elitist.

And so, lurking just beneath the surface, the real Lou Dobbs revealed himself: a paranoid coward afraid of his own shadow –- traits common to racists and hatemongers.

After the expected ad hominen attacks on Rivera, avoiding the substance of the criticisms, Dobbs made a sympathy play by claiming he had received threatening phone calls for weeks (which went unreported until now) and that gunshots had been fired at his house. Dobbs linked the alleged threats and gunshots to his “crackdown on illegal immigration and to his opponents’ rhetoric,” Geraldo Rivera most prominent among them. It wasn’t necessary for Dobbs to mention Rivera’s name for the inference to be drawn.

When asked to comment on Dobbs’s complaint of shots fired at his house in Sussex County, New Jersey, a NJ state police spokesperson “chuckled out loud” in a phone interview, and said he “wouldn’t classify the [alleged gunfire incident] as very unusual.” There are hunters in the area and, “at this time of year hunter (shooting) complaints go up.” When asked what he thought of Dobbs’s version of the gunfire incident, the very professional Sgt. Jones said, "I'm really going to leave Lou Dobbs’s assessment to himself.”

LOU'S LUCK RUNS OUT: MEXICAN CHUPACABRA MONSTER FINDS HIM TREMBLING UNDER THE BED!

And so it is. Lou Dobbs is spooked by nonexistent threats and irrational dangers hiding in the shadows and attics of his brain. You’ve made your bed, Mr. Dobbs. Now it’s time to sleep in it with your demons. If you can.