Lou Dobbs Goes After Hispanic Chamber of Commerce ... a Step Too Far for His Corporate Masters

As you may know, I get my cable news fix on the treadmill at the gym, where CNN is always on, just waiting to bring down my IQ by a few points. I watch the bottle-blonde babes and pasty white guys who bring us the news without sound, gazing at their shiny dents as they flap tonelessly and obsessing on the little tidbits that crawl on the ticker beneath their over-sized heads.

And, frequently, there's Lou Dobbs. I have a bizarre love-hate relationship with Dobbs. The only broadcaster to hammer at the status quo on issues like trade and executive compensation -- which I love -- he's also an immigration hardliner's hardliner, spewing the kind of right-wing pseudo-populism that seems to me to be little more than a distraction from the real issues Dobbs' beloved middle-class faces.

Recently, though, it seems that Dobbs' scattershot hit a poorly selected target: the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. And, stunningly, Lou actually backpedaled.  

I'll leave the details to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Question: What’s the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce?

A)    An organization that seeks “to foster Hispanic economic development and to create a sustainable prosperity for the benefit of American society.”

B)    An organization that “is interested in … Mexico’s export of drugs and illegal aliens to the United States.”

If you chose a), chances are you’re a perfectly sensible person with a reasonable familiarity with the issues and organizations of the day. After all, the Hispanic Chamber is well known as a relatively conservative, pro-business organization that represents the interests of more than 2.5 million Hispanic-owned businesses.

If you chose b), you’re almost certainly Lou Dobbs, the insult-spewing Latino-basher who hosts CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” five times a week.