Geraldo Rips Lou Dobbs For Latino-Bashing Rhetoric, Says He ‘Is Not Coming To Fox News’
Geraldo Rips Lou Dobbs For Latino-Bashing Rhetoric, Says He ‘Is Not Coming To Fox News’
Speaking at a luncheon sponsored by the Spanish newspaper El Diario La Prensa on Thursday, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera said, “One of the aspects of our reality in the United States now is the defamatory tone of the immigration debate and how that immigration debate has slandered an entire race of people.” Rivera proceeded to lay much of the blame at the feet of CNN’s Lou Dobbs:
Lou Dobbs, a man who was an accomplished journalist, and who left to go and start his own venture in the digital media, having to do with space, I believe, and then came back to CNN, and nobody was watching his program. He discovered that one of the way to get people to watch was to make of the image of a young Latino trying to get into this country a profoundly negative icon. Lou Dobbs is almost single-handedly responsible for creating, for being the architect of the young-Latino-as-scapegoat for everything that ails this country.
Rivera’s criticism echoes that of his Fox colleague John Stossel, who said he doesn’t “subscribe to Lou Dobbs-kind of rants about immigrants wrecking America.” (Dobbs subsequently called Stossel a “self-important ass” with “myopic idiocy.”
The New York Times reported recently that Dobbs met with Fox News chief Roger Ailes to discuss possibly joining the Fox Business network. Rivera said in his speech that he was so opposed to Dobbs joining Fox News that he called his boss and received assurance that the network was not going to hire the CNN host:
No more of these lies, no more of this slander, no more of this stereotyping. I can tell you proudly, when this man [Dobbs] was widely rumored to be coming to my network, I called my boss couple of weeks ago, and he said it’s absolutely untrue. Lou Dobbs is not coming to Fox News. He belongs at CNN if they can justify his presence there that’s their problem.
Watch it:
Latino and pro-immigrant activists have launched two campaigns, Drop Dobbs and Basta Dobbs, which are aimed at pressuring CNN to “hold Mr. Dobbs to journalistic standards” or dump him altogether.
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog Roll
The question is not if Dobbs is coming to Fox, the question is why is Geraldo still there. If Geraldo is so attuned to the hispanic audience, then why does he stay at Fox that uses him as a prop.
October 25th, 2009 at 8:36 amDobbs is a problem for CNN–but Rivera may have a bigger problem. Wait till the immigration debate gets going, see Heraldo friends on FOX start the lies,the slander, and the stereotyping. What will he do?
October 25th, 2009 at 8:40 am“MY network”
That little comment from Geraldo caught my attention. He’s now one of the Fox pod-people.
October 25th, 2009 at 8:43 amGood points made by previous comments.
Doesn’t Dobbs look a little like Cheney( See photo below)???
October 25th, 2009 at 8:44 amI agree with the post so far, and my question to Geraldo and Stossel is… Were is the outrage at your station for the likes of Hannity, Beck and O’Lier who have also milked this issue with lies and hate? It makes me wonder how really concerned you are?
October 25th, 2009 at 8:50 amSo was it really Geraldo’s hard hitting expose that saved our children and society from Satanism?
October 25th, 2009 at 8:53 amGeraldo may not be as offensive as his buddies but, I still don’t like him. He may have done as much as any on-air personality to lower T.V. “news” to the tabloid level. And he still owes me an hour of my life back for the stupid “Al Capone’s vault” fiasco.
October 25th, 2009 at 9:04 amHeads up, CNN.
You know you’re in trouble when Fox News scores points on your ethics.
October 25th, 2009 at 9:06 amhmm.. guess it’s a slow news day -
Geraldo is a freak – and an idiot. Remember the big one hour show opening ‘al capone’s vault’… to find nothing -
from wikipedia – ‘al capone’s vault’
”a silly, high-concept stunt that failed to deliver on its titillating promise.” The term “Al Capone’s vault” has become slang for a heavily hyped event with disappointing results”
see also: tea party / glenn beck
October 25th, 2009 at 9:49 amThis feels WAY to much like ‘good cop/bad cop’.
Any intelligent Republican strategist knows that the Republican Brand has been damaged with Hispanic-Americans. Any intelligen Republican strategist knows that the Republicans need to regain some of their votes. They may be selfish, venal and wrong-thinking, but not all of them are as dumb as rocks. So, they use one tool to criticize another tool?
When a network is established for a political purpose, EVERYTHING they do should be evaluated as possibly a political stunt.
Fox is, essentially, a fixed cost for the Republicans. The variable costs they have for launching any new political initiative are minimal. We must expect them to be taking every chance they can to make a political point. Some will be blatant and some will be subtle. But, there will always be people looking out to maximize the value of that fixed cost.
October 25th, 2009 at 9:51 am“They may be selfish, venal and wrong-thinking, but not all of them are as dumb as rocks.”
Dang! Mis-placed anticedents! The ‘they’ here is the Republican strategist.
sorry.
October 25th, 2009 at 9:54 amThe question is not if Dobbs is coming to Fox, the question is why is Geraldo still there. If Geraldo is so attuned to the hispanic audience, then why does he stay at Fox that uses him as a prop.
Geraldo’s not attuned to any Hispanic audience, though he would like everyone to believe that he is. He is simply a whore. A money-hustling whore, just like the rest of the Faux Snooze crew.
October 25th, 2009 at 10:38 amBoy! pot calling kettle black. Geraldo is one to call someone on self promoting
October 25th, 2009 at 10:59 amCNN needs to drop Dobbs, he can get a job as a WalMart greeter for all I care. It would be nice to get all the nuts in one network, Faux, that as the WH has said is just a wing of the repug party. Throw Dobbs, Buchanan, and Scarborough all in one place. That’s what should happen so the 81% of us who aren’t nuts can live in peace.
October 25th, 2009 at 11:09 amCroxNews has already more than enough Latino bashers, thank you very much.
No more need apply.
October 25th, 2009 at 11:09 amI watched the video. Had mixed emotions, since Geraldo has a history of hype & sheer goofiness. Why does he stay with Fox? This isn’t going to make me reconsider my decision not to watch anything Fox or NewsCorp. Everything that comes out of Geraldo’s mouth definitely should be evaluated in terms of the network he’s been a part of for the past few years, since he would not be permitted to say what he says if it hadn’t first been vetted by Fox (just as General Electric has a say in the policy @ NBC, CNBC & MSNBC).
October 25th, 2009 at 11:10 amPush back, Geraldo.
If you really care about lies and slander, then stand up if and when Fox pushes their own agenda regarding immigration.
October 25th, 2009 at 11:14 amJealousy is already running rampant at CroxNews, where there are just far too many big-name stupidheads with gargantuan egos.
By the way, Jenny Craig should start a CroxNews franchise.
CroxNews is teeming with aging fatties who could use some weight management and dietary counseling.
October 25th, 2009 at 11:15 amHe got mad at Billy once. But they’re friends now.
October 25th, 2009 at 11:15 amSo, Senor Geraldo…if you truly were a man of principles who gave a real damn about your fellow Hispanics – you wouldn’t be working at Fux Noise in the first place. Instead you’re just a feeble little pot calling out a feeble little kettle so STFU.
October 25th, 2009 at 11:16 amvote down coward troll.
October 25th, 2009 at 11:29 amI bet Dobbs is itching to whack Geraldo with a chair.
October 25th, 2009 at 11:29 amSurvey says two weirdos think some force other than Geraldo saved the nation from Satanism…
October 25th, 2009 at 12:01 pmI don’t like Dobbs or Rivera. Geraldo Rivera is an apologist for the Hispanic community who feels guilty for not helping Hispanics since he stopped practicing law. As far as the immigration debate is concerned, Rivera is not going to convince most Americans that another amnesty for illegals should be done again. They have legitimate concerns that if we extend another amnesty, we will have to keep doing it every few years. The Dems may want to do something for the illegals but it is not going to be a full fledged amensty. Obama will need to steer a centrist position that meets the needs of both groups. That may mean a much larger force on the border as well as more walls, higher penalties for hiring illegals, etc. I would note that illegal immigration is a hot button issue in Europe. They are being swamped with illegals from the Eastern bloc, China, and Africa. Europe still does not have a cohesive way to deal with illegals and each country is struggling with the issue.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:10 pmDear Mr. Rivera,
Does it bother you that you look like a shaggy dog that sleeps with fleas?
October 25th, 2009 at 1:16 pmGetting slapped down by Geraldo, hard to get much lower than that.
October 25th, 2009 at 1:36 pmWhy do they insist on calling opinion programming ‘news’
October 25th, 2009 at 1:39 pmDobbs is a race-exploiting shmuck, but Rivera is giving him too much credit–there is a deep and abiding undercurrent of racism, xenophobia, and religious bigotry running through a segment of white America that Dobbs tapped into. Non-whites and non-Aemricans are not immune to analogous illnesses.
October 25th, 2009 at 1:41 pmJerry Rivers has very little standing in the Hispanic community. They are quick to recognize those Tio Tomases who use their ethnicity soley for their own advantage, while distancing themselves from their people’s problems.
October 25th, 2009 at 2:59 pm¿Fox won´t take him? Send Dobbs to Limboland.
October 25th, 2009 at 3:49 pmChat Odalari
October 25th, 2009 at 5:43 pmChat Sayfalari
cet
Chat
Sohbet
mirc
mirc indir
mirc chat
mirc download
Sohbet
Sohbet odasi
Sohbet odalari
Sohbet odasi
mirc indir
türkce mirc indir
The presence of Lou Dobbs is not justified.
There, i said it.
October 25th, 2009 at 6:01 pmNow, there’s a pair – Lou & Geraldo. A couple of washed-up hasbeen reporters. Ooops! I meant washedup hasbeen babblingbobblingheads.
October 25th, 2009 at 6:06 pmIn order for Geraldo to be a has been, he would have to have been a journalist at one time. I am not aware of any time that Geraldo could be considered a journalist. If I am wrong, please enlighten me.
October 25th, 2009 at 6:15 pmIf Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch think Dobbs will increase ratings and make them money, he’ll be on Fox News, regardless of what has-been Geraldo says.
October 25th, 2009 at 6:23 pmIf Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch think Dobbs will increase ratings and make them money, he’ll be on Fox News, regardless of what has-been Geraldo says.
October 26th, 2009 at 12:17 amGeraldo’s, Dobbs’, and Stossel’s style of journalism is as worthless as cheap plastic.
October 26th, 2009 at 12:40 amGeraldo is such a powerful figure at Fox News that when he heard a rumor he made a phone call and found it wasn’t true. C’mon Geraldo, at least threaten to resign or something.
October 26th, 2009 at 1:20 amI applaud Rivera for standing up and speaking out. There is no place in our emerging society of change for racists like Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, who only further the seeds of racism and hatred in this world. We must all learn to respect each other and love each other. No matter the outter skin, we are all one with the same color blood underneath — our inner self, our real self — one coming from the same one Source of Light and Love.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:44 amGracias, Geraldo. Here’s my take on Lou Dobbs.
NATIONAL HISPANIC FORUM
Perspectives on American Hispanic Issues
July 5, 2007
CNN AND LOU DOBBS: JOURNALISM OR JINGOISM
Included in The Norton Mix (customizable print reader database), W.W. Norton & Company, April 3, 2009. Posted on The Latino American Experience Blog, hosted by Ilan Stavans. Greenwood Press Group, January 18, 2008.
By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca
Scholar in Residence and Chair of the Department of Chicana/Chicano and Hemispheric Studies, Western New Mexico University
In a time when the national temper calls for reason in the solution of problems facing the American people, a powerful media venue like CNN mixes jingoism with (advocacy) journalism, not just with Lou Dobbs but with Nancy Grace and others. Fox News is not any better. Networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC have pretty much stuck to reporting news rather than making news or stirring the pot of distemper with jingoism.
This is not to say that Lou Dobbs does not have the right to his opinions and to articulate them per the First Amendment. The issue is his “right” to air them over public airwaves without recourse for an equitable response. Sending emails to Lou Dobbs is not the same as equal time for an opposing view.
But the still larger question is: why is CNN airing such programming in its line-up? For many of us anent the issue of “immigration” over which Dobbs rants nightly, the racial inferences are inescapable. It’s not immigration that has Dobbs’ knickers in a knot, it’s Mexicans. Lou Dobbs doesn’t like Mexicans. He’s not just pushing for a border fence along the U.S.-Canada border. Or to keep out “illegal” European immigrants. Or Cubans rushing into Miami. He wants to rid the United States of Mexicans.
His rant makes no distinction between Mexicans and Mexican Americans. To Dobbs, a Mexican is a Mexican. His rhetorical brush paints over the differences. Night after night pursuing his bête noir, he insults not only Mexicans but Mexican Americans as well. Via the soft under-belly of the United States, Dobbs sees hordes of terrorists infiltrating the United States to carry out their nefarious schemes of violence.
Has it not dawned on Dobbs that the pilots of the planes that rammed into the twin towers in New York were not Mexicans and they did not come into the United States through Mexico.
Never mind that despite the historical American dismemberment of Mexico in 1848, Mexico has maintained enthusiastic diplomatic relations with the U.S., becoming one of the country’s most favorable trading partners. But Mexicans are not streaming across the U.S.-Mexico border to inflict physical harm on Ameri¬cans. On the contrary. The Mexicans who have crossed into the United States without documentation are doing so to improve their economic circumstances.
But Dobbs thinks their very presence in the United States harms the American economy. Ignore reports and studies to the contrary. Dobbs has his mind made up, and he will not be confused with the facts. Moreover, for Dobbs, that horde of “illegal” Mexican immigrants imperils the values of American life and culture. Mexicans are today’s whipping boy and Dobbs is wielding a big crop. There is a growing movement of Catonists in the American Republic which fear immigrants and what they augur for America’s future. Catonists are pessimistic about that future.
Cato was a senator in the Roman Republic during the Punic Wars with Carthage in the third century BC. He was an “anti-intellectual monumentalist” who fed Roman fears of encroachment by decadent foreigners whose alien values, he contended, would disrupt the Roman political tradition and the organization of the nation. And though the Roman Empire was a multicultural enterprise, Cato was a Roman supremacist who believed that Rome was for the Romans.
Americans like Samuel Huntington, the Harvard professor of foreign affairs, believes multiculturalism will destroy the United States. It was not multiculturalism that destroyed Rome, it was the arrogant excesses of its leaders that destroyed Rome. It’s out of this fear of multiculturalism, hardened and institutionalized, that the current wave of American nativism rises.
In the mid 18th century, just after the U.S. War against Mexico (1846-1848), American attitudes about the territory dismembered from Mexico focused more on the promise of the land than on patrolling it. The wrested Mexican territory was, after all, an expansive piece of real estate, and, according to the propaganda of the time, sparsely populated which is why it was there for the taking. But the fact of the matter is that the annexed Mexican territory was much more populated than Anglo statistics have suggested.
The Tejano historian Arnoldo De Leon has painted, perhaps, the best “picture” of this land and its population of the time. He describes the landscape as dotted with small communities and family jacales connecting the larger population clusters like San Antonio, El Paso, and Santa Fe, communities of Hispanos doing for themselves as frontier people everywhere have done for themselves. Anglo American accounts, however, have distorted the reality of the Hispanic Southwest to fit their own providential purposes.
All of this is to say that Mexican Americans have historical priority in the American Southwest which was once part of their patrimony. But missing in the current debate over immigration are the voices of Mexican Americans, those who are at the crux of the issue. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that Mexican American voices are absent in most public policy discussions in this country.
This is why, as Mexican Americans, we must debate the debaters, those who are arguing most stre-nuously for immigration reform, not because we are opposed to immigration reform but because we are a vital part of that issue and our voices ought to be, therefore, part of the debate.
Unfortunately, the only views Americans get about public policy issues like immigration are those advanced by mainstream mongers like Lou Dobbs who are caught up myopically with the topic, from Catonists who have only a single-minded view of America’s future and what the United States should be. Instead of a populist vision of America, including all our visions, we are sub¬jected to a singular apodictic vision of America based on one man’s view–an American Cato.
Copyright ©2007 by the author. All rights reserved.
October 26th, 2009 at 1:49 pm