An analysis of Lou Dobbs

Both Ken Auletta of The New Yorker and Kurt Andersen in New York magazine have a look at Lou Dobbs at CNN and his metamorphosis in the past few years from business show anchor into raging populist.

Auletta wrote, “It is the kind of welcome that one might have expected for an earlier incarnation of Lou Dobbs—the Harvard-educated anchor of CNN’s ‘Moneyline,’ which in the nineteen-nineties served as a sort of video clubhouse for corporate America. But, in the past four years or so, Dobbs has been reborn as a populist—a full-throated champion of ‘the little guy,’ an evangelical opponent of liberal immigration laws. His hour-long program, which airs at six, features Dobbs in a role that combines Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan. On the air, he boomingly assails the upper management of corporate America for its ‘outrageous’ greed, pay packages, and corruption, its opposition to increasing the minimum wage, its hiring of ‘illegal aliens,’ its ties to ‘Communist China,’ and its eagerness to send American jobs overseas.

“The new Lou Dobbs often surprises those who recall the old Lou Dobbs of ‘Moneyline.’ Daniel Henninger, the deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, wrote, ‘Old admirers are aghast. It’s as if whatever made Linda Blair’s head spin around in ‘The Exorcist’ had invaded the body of Lou Dobbs and left him with the brain of Dennis Kucinich,’ a reference to the left-wing Ohio congressman and former Presidential aspirant.”

Meanwhile, Andersen noted, “Not that I always think his opinions are wrong. And the fact that he’s ideologically eclectic prevents a critical mass of anti-Dobbs antipathy forming on either the right or left. But surely our journalistic standards shouldn’t be contingent on how much we agree or disagree with the contortions of the journalism.

“For instance, I enjoyed CNN business reporter Kitty Pilgrim’s normal-nightly-news piece about a Cisco stockholder initiative that would forbid the Internet hardware company from doing business with the Chinese censorship apparatus. But when she threw back to Dobbs, he couldn’t contain himself, as usual.

“‘It just makes your blood boil,’ he said of Cisco. ‘I mean, it’s disgusting. But … it’s encouraging that [the stockholder group] has the integrity and the drive to push through. That is a very hopeful sign.’

“’It certainly is,’ his correspondent agreed, and that was that. The news!”

Read Auletta here. Read Andersen here.