Ted Turner Would Fire Lou Dobbs If He Could

Ted Turner would fire Lou Dobbs. How do I know? Because Ted Turner said so:

This excerpt from Ted Turner's April 1, 2008 interview on PBS, in which the visionary founder of CNN tells Charlie Rose he would fire Lou Dobbs, bears repeating:

Rose: Lou Dobbs used to be a friend of yours.

Turner: He's still a friend of mine.

Rose: Yeah.

Turner: But I think he's kinda flipped out. I wouldn't... Tom Johnson and I wouldn't let him do this when he was working at CNN. He just had to do the financial news straight, you know, and not fill it up with his opinions about who he hates and doesn't like the Mexicans and immigration.

Rose: So what would you do if you were running CNN today?

Turner: I'd call him in and chew him out.

Rose: You'd say either you tow the line or you can't work here?

Turner: That's exactly right.

Rose: That's what you'd do?

Turner: That's what we did before.

Rose: With him [Dobbs]?

Turner: Yeah.

Rose: Yeah.

The full one hour DVD of this Charlie Rose/Ted Turner interview was provided to me in the summer of 2008 by Phillip Evans, Vice President and Chief Communications Officer of Turner Enterprises. I've been monitoring Dobbs for years, tevo'ing his shows and observing his worsening narcissism. Dobbs is an anomaly on CNN in how he operates more in service to himself than in service to CNN. He stands apart from the network's other anchors in his rabid ideological rage and megalomaniacal self-promotion. Wolf Blitzer may be a drama-seeking nudge with annoying subject-ridden phraseology, but one could hardly imagine Blitzer tagging himself Mr. Independent and reading only admiring emails on-air, including demands that he run for President.