Wither, Lou Dobbs

lou dobbs is a disingenuous liar.

i'm not saying that his concern for the perils facing the middle class in this country are misplaced. i think, actually, it's nice to have someone stand up for those of us who earn less than $70K a year. i just wish he'd do it properly.

two things about his populist crusade leave me more than skeptical.

one is that, while he wants the middle class to get a fairer shake, his antidote is a return to the form of economic isolationism spawned by the notion of american exceptionalism. both are crap, and partly responsible for the mess we find ourselves in now. for way too long people in this country were told by our leaders that america would always have the strongest economy and that all you needed to get ahead was hard work. this was true, in some ways, in the period after world war II. america drove the world's economy because it controlled the means and mode of production. this is true no longer. what we should be telling the middle class is what bill clinton tried to tell everyone, but was shouted down by nationalist idiots on the right and economic isolationists on the left -- that the only way for the american middle class to get back ahead is to go back to school, to learn global political economics, to increase our technological literacy, and to collaborate with other nations in doing so.

in his nightly tirades against illegal immigrants and internationalism, dobbs hypes up the worst ideologies of both the right (nationalist isolationism) and the left (economic isolationism), and fails to speak the harsh truth to americans: we've become fat, lazy, and dependent on a false sense of superiority.

the second concern i have with dobbs is that since joining CNN in the early 1980's he has helped create the economic mess america is in currently. he did nothing but push unfair "free" trade practices to his elite viewers without warning of the perils of increasingly divergent economic classes. that he issues such warnings now is of no consolation.

and this is why i don't take him at his word. if he were honestly concerned about the middle class he'd be telling them (us) the real truth about the ways in which economics, education, technology, and immigration converge to shape how america operates in a globalized economy.

the fact that he only plays to many americans' prejudices in speaking his form of "truth" proves to me that he's in this only to boost CNN's ratings and his own bank account.