What a fine thing to read hanging high on the first business page of the NY Times. Dave Leonhardt does a take-down of Lyin’ Lou Dobbs and the 3,000 illegal immigrants with leprosy in 3 years theme he has been roaring for a while.

I have been somewhat taken aback about how shameless he has been during the whole dispute, so I spent some time reading transcripts from old episodes of “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” The way he handled leprosy, it turns out, is not all that unusual.

For one thing, Mr. Dobbs has a somewhat flexible relationship with reality. He has said, for example, that one-third of the inmates in the federal prison system are illegal immigrants. That’s wrong, too. According to the Justice Department, 6 percent of prisoners in this country are noncitizens (compared with 7 percent of the population). For a variety of reasons, the crime rate is actually lower among immigrants than natives.

Fictional Lou

My only quibble would be his lede in which he says: “The whole controversy involving Lou Dobbs and leprosy started with a “60 Minutes” segment a few weeks ago.”

The “whole controversy” started when Dobbs began bashing immigrants for joy and ratings. It was finally taken notice of by “those who count” in the 60 Minutes piece and now Dobbs is getting some attention from those other than white supremicists where he is a big favorite. [No links provided. Get ’em yourselves….]


John Amato at Crooks and Liars
has a wee follow up, suggesting that the Sunday Talk Shows all have sequels in which the claims made are fact-checked! Wowser, that would be a show worth watching!

Matt Yglesias wonders why Dobbs is being singled out. There are a lot of other liars on teeveee and they are getting a free pass. Lot’s of interesting comments following the post, as well.

I’d just say for myself, pile on when there is opportunity, another may be a long time in coming. Sure Dobbs is sticking up for working class folks, so did Dennis Kearney’s Workingman’s Party in San Francisco in the 1870s. Good, stick up for them. Racist attacks on other workers is not the way to do it.