Lou Dobbs famously asserted that illegal immigrants were coming into the United States carrying leprosy, and that it caused a spike in domestic cases. 60 Minutes debunked it, but he defended the report anyway. Why was the leprosy story ‘correct’? Because he’s Lou Dobbs, and he reported it on his show.
Every other reporter’s facts are subject to scrutiny, but not Lou’s. Because Lou is the one person in the world who only reports the truth. And to support that lazy arrogance, he called the same ‘reporter’ back on the show to repeat the same falsehoods without doing any of the same fact-checking that 60 Minutes showed he omitted. Only this time, he and the reporter added “..we don’t make up numbers here”:
Lou felt astounded: “…it’s, uh…it’s remarkable that, uh…this, whatever, confusion or confoundment over 7,000 cases. They actually keep a registry of cases of leprosy.” That’s right, and you keep refusing to read it. Unbelievable. Lou is actually touting the same registry that proves he’s a professional liar. And then he has the gall to say he has no idea why the spike in cases, which never occurred, occurred? In other words, no one has any idea what’s causing the false rise in leprosy, but now he just happens to be in the mood to talk about illegal immigration.
How the hell can he get away with the blank assertion that what he does is anything but utter bullshit? Because he relies upon experts, like the poltergeist they used for the story:
Dr. Madeleine Cosman, perhaps the creepiest human being in the world. Or, at least she was, while she was still alive. Madeleine was an expert…in ancient and Renaissance stuff. She wrote Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony. She also had a Ph.D. In English. Might as well mirror an ultra-Conservative crocodile whackjob Medievalist when you want to lecture people on inter-border infectious disease trends, right?
When Amy Goodman called Dobbs out again for lying about fantasy leperous illegal immigrants, he defended himself with a new dodge, reminding us of the intellectual rifle, Dr. Cosman. She was amazing:
(…thanks to truthinimmigration.org for the clip and the debunk.)
See a trend? No matter what the actual truth is, no matter how conclusively you prove to him that he’s wrong, the blowhard won’t give in. He’s always got a reason or an excuse because, frankly, the idea of his being the ultimate source of all things true is a lot more fun to indulge than the truth. Hey, why waste time finding out if you’re an honest man when you can just pretend to be the face of honesty itself? C’mon, Lou is on CNN, fer chrissakes. So, like a shiny brat, he’ll take responsibility for nothing that he’s done, said, or about to do because he’s just better than that.
Yesterday, in an interview with Telemundo, they understandably challenged him yet again on his lying about leprosy and illegal immigrants. This time, he finally admits the story wasn’t accurate. But, he says, all he did was say one word. And the mistake wasn’t his fault, of course, it was the reporter’s, she ‘ad-libbed’. And, besides, you jerks, it was four years ago:
MARIA CELESTE: …but even after that, that was proven wrong, what you had said, you stood behind your reporting, insisting that it was accurate. Why was that?
LOU DOBBS: No, no. Let’s be very clear: one–I did not stand behind that reporting, in fact we corrected that reporting. And secondly, in fairness to me, if you will, I never said a word about leprosy and undocumented immigrants as you put it. My correspondent on our broadcast ad-libbed it, and as you’re very familiar with the process of an edited report, and at the end of that, she referred to a source with whom she had been speaking, and she said at the end of that report, ad-libbed it, that is without script or preparation, but simply said it, that there were thousands of people on the registry for leprosy in the United States and that those had shot up dramatically over the course of three years. Obviously she was wrong. My only statement by the way in coming out of that report was one word: “incredible.” That was it…
Dobbs called the reporter back onto his show to tell the leprosy lie a second time and to personally aver “I stand 100 percent behind what you said.” But now, Dobbs remembers that it was a wispy ad-lib from a foolish reporter. Hell, all the perplexed Lou managed to mutter was…’incredible.’
Enough? It’s time to tell the truth: Lou Dobbs is just a fucking liar.
