Dobbs

No, Lou's not all bad. He's one of the few bobble-heads at CNN who will actually give a nod to logic and acknowledge the utter absurdity of Bush's policies on, for example, the war in Iraq.

The problem is that the bulk of the coverage on Lou Dobbs Tonight is not given to Iraq, or to other vital issues like New Orleans or illegal wiretapping, but rather is reserved for Dobbs' pet subjects. His obsession with immigration and corporate globalization, while clothed in a populist concern for America's middle-class, does not jive with his record as a corporate lackey for much of his career, nor his background as a "lifelong Republican." And his show certainly has no place in the middle of CNN's daily lineup, in the guise of a news show with a basis in solid journalism.

His bizarre rants have become parodies of themselves; for example, he ridiculed the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center for suggesting that the hillbilly vigilante "Minutemen" are perhaps motivated in some way by racism, calling any such claim "mind-boggling." It never occurs to Lou that there may be a disturbing historical context affecting the social relationships at the heart of the immigration debate, or that there may be a dubious morality to the world's richest country locking out the world's poor immigrants, or that there are a significant number of innocent people who will be affected by H.R. 4437.