The Rebirth of Lou Dobbs

How did a well respected Peabody Award-winning television financial news pundit like Lou Dobbs morph into a political pundit with strong "populist" similarities to the likes of Rush Limbaugh? Within the past few years, "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on the Cable News Network has deemphasized financial news and views and has served as a public platform for controversial political issues, particularly anti-immigration issues and the anti-Obama "birther" movement.

The Birther Movement

The so-called birthers have claimed that Barack Obama was born outside the United States; and is thus ineligible to be President of the United States. They claim that he was born in Kenya, the ancestral home of his birth father, not Honolulu, Hawaii.

Countering these accusations, in 2008, Hawaii's health director Dr. Chiyome Fukino stated in an official letter (through the office of the Republican governor of Hawaii) that she had personally seen Obama's birth certificate in the Health Department Archives. She further stated that Hawaii state law "prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record."

This official letter, however, did not quell the rumors and innuendos from naysayers who demanded the original birth certificate. Leaders of this so-called movement include attorney/dentist Orly Taitz and Alan Keyes, Obama's former Republican opponent in the 2004 U.S. Senate race.

Unfortunately for Obama defenders, the President's original paper birth certificate was destroyed in 2001. This was only because all Hawaii paper birth records (starting from 1908) had been converted to electronic format and officially disposed of. What does physically exist is Obama's paper certificate of live birth from Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu. And there was also a 1961 Barack Obama birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser. Certainly prescient conspirators didn't place this birth announcement in the newspaper 48 years ago.

Lou Dobbs first provided a platform for these allegations against the legitimacy of the Obama presidency on his syndicated radio program. Although his radio program is independent of CNN, Dobbs has discussed the so-called birther movement on his CNN television show. Although Dobbs hasn't personally interviewed Keyes and Taitz on "Lou Dobbs Tonight", fill-in host Kitty Pilgrim did interview both of them on the program. Because he has provided a mass media platform to an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory, Dobbs has lost much credibility among his peers.

Lou Dobbs and CNN

When Ted Turner launched CNN in 1980, Lou Dobbs was one of the network's first news anchors. He was also CNN's youngest news anchor, and possessed an economics degree from Harvard. It figured that his specialty would be business and financial news and opinions. At the time, he was very much a strong and credible supporter of Wall Street and big business.

Dobbs was given his own show, "Moneyline", which lasted almost 20 years. "Moneyline" was so well respected that it earned Lou Dobbs a Lifetime Achievement Emmy and a Peabody Award.

In 1999 Dobbs left CNN after taking insult when his show was preempted by an address from President Bill Clinton. He also had a longstanding feud with Rick Kaplan, the equally headstrong president of CNN.

In 2000 Dobbs launched Space.com, an independent web site devoted to all news and opinion concerning American and international space programs. Unfortunately for Dobbs, Space.com went the way of many well funded web sites during the so-called dot-com bust.

In 2001 former boss and nemesis Rick Kaplan was gone and Dobbs went back to work at CNN. His "Moneyline" program was given a new name: "Lou Dobbs Moneyline." In 2003 "Lou Dobbs Moneyline" was given a new name: "Lou Dobbs Tonight." The show's focus had also changed from financial news to political news. His new CNN boss was Jon Klein; to Dobbs, a more diplomatic boss than Rick Kaplan.

The New Lou Dobbs

In 2006 Lou Dobbs published a bestselling book called "War on the Middle Class: How to FIGHT BACK." This became a strong indicator that Dobbs had abandoned his pro-Wall Street stance for a more populist Main Street view. An easy answer for his newfound disillusionment with the economic "elites" could have been his survival from the burst dot-com bubble.

Dobbs has also become an outspoken proponent of immigration law reform, causing criticism from respected organizations that include the Southern Poverty Law Center. A controversial example from 2007, Dobbs had claimed that cases of leprosy had increased in the United States because of infected illegal aliens. In truth, cases of leprosy had declined by 2007.

Even his friend Ted Turner has stated that Dobbs "has gone too far inserting his opinions, for my taste."