Why is Lou Dobbs obsessed with Obama place of birth?

[liberal N proud]

Yesterday there was this http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x340791 posted by Enrique with some woman and a room full of idiots going on about Obama's birth certificate and then this morning I read this in the LA Times....

Lou Dobbs and the canard over President Obama's birth
The subject fits neatly with the TV and radio host's obsession

Lou Dobbs had David from Freeport, N.Y., on the line, the caller musing darkly about President Obama "rushing all these programs through by whatever means," knowing he will soon be exposed as a fake, a fraud, a . . . Kenyan.

At that point, a scrupulous radio host had three options: (A) hit the kill button (B) laugh and hit the kill button or (C) offer some push-back against the fantastical notion that Barack Obama was born on foreign soil and thus serves -- illegally -- as the Oval Office's first resident alien.

Instead, Dobbs chose the maximum complicity-minimum integrity route, or (D): "Certainly your view can't be discounted," the host said.

So it went over the last week, with the bloviating interviewer offering the (nominal) credibility of his syndicated radio show, which airs on dozens of stations, and the CNN television brand as a platform for assorted wing nuts, whose conspiracy fulminations about Obamahad previously been most virulent in the more disreputable reaches of the Internet.

The subject fits neatly with Dobbs' nativist, immigrant obsession. And the cable demagogue, already well behind Fox News, has got to find some way to keep from sagging behind even traditional cable television laggard MSNBC.

Cooler heads at CNN put some distance between themselves and their once star host, with fill-in Kitty Pilgrim using a segment of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on Friday to provide a substantially more skeptical look at the Obama-made-in-Africa claims.

Pilgrim introduced the topic of Obama's alleged foreign birth as she sat in for Dobbs that night, calling it "the discredited rumor that won't go away."

"CNN has fully investigated the issue," the substitute said, and "found no basis for the questions about the president's birthplace."

When the issue first surfaced in the presidential campaign last summer, numerous credible news organizations and even the Hawaii Department of Health presented clear evidence that Obama was born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu.

But those reports have done little to snuff out elaborate and ever-mutating conspiracy theories.

I often hear from disgruntled readers that they don't pay attention to the dread "Mainstream Media" because they can find "the truth" on the Internet. Translation: Some blogger will please them by propping up just about any cockeyed theory that they hold.

The Internet agitators, in turn, get support and sustenance from mainstream provocateurs like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who last month chortled, "God does not have a birth certificate, and neither does Obama -- not that we've seen."

Dobbs and the others found a nominal "news" peg for the story last week when the U.S. Army allowed a reserve major, Stefan F. Cook, to reverse his voluntary deployment to Afghanistan. Cook proclaimed his orders invalid because, he insisted, his commander in chief wasn't born in the U.S.

Never mind that the good major appears in this instance to be more agent provocateur than man of arms or that he is represented by Orly Taitz, an Orange County attorney (and dentist) who has made it her life's work to prove Obama isn't one of us.

Dobbs welcomed Taitz and another of her clients, Alan Keyes (who was crushed by Obama in their Illinois U.S. Senate race), to his radio program like seers instead of extreme partisans. Dobbs suggested he had reached no conclusions, before barreling ahead with questions about why Obama hasn't produced "his birth certificate, the long form, the real deal."

...

It goes on at this link: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-onthemedia22-2009jul22,0,3061950.column


Talk about conspiracy theorist, these wackos are grasping.

[LeftishBrit]

1. Probably because he's a xenophobe

The RW xenophobes probably hate Obama because (a) he has lots of international connections - whereas someone like Bush had never even *travelled* abroad before becoming president; and (b), and more importantly, CAN'T YOU SEE HE'S NOT WHITE!!???!!!11

Nowadays, it's not that respectable to say on TV that you don't want a black president so they put it in terms of his birth certificate instead.

[Orsino]

5. ...and is padding his airtime with bullshit...

...to ensure that no journalism seeps in.

[Heidi]

2. He's a xenophobe.

Next question?

[Sherman A1]

3. Because Lou is about ratings and needs a controversy

in order to keep them (and his job). It's not about reporting the news or anything resembling the news or discussing topics that might actually affect us. It's about keeping the pot stirred and hence trying to keep an audience. I don't know what his ratings are these days, but I know l long ago gave up on his program.

[depakid]

6. And like most in the American corporate media- doesn't cae if he has to lie like a rug

to do it.

As he did with the leprosy thing. That would have been enough to have gotten him blackballed in other western nations. Or on America of some two decades ago, when honesty still mattered.

[mwb970]

7. He might as well be Glenn Beck.

They're all such jerks. What a sad time this is for America.

[cboy4]

4. Because, he doesn't like people who don't have white skin .. and believes

anyone who doesn't must be an "illegal alien."

He's a slob.

[Vinca]

8. Lou's really gone off the deep end over the last few years.

I blame it on chemicals seeping into his head from his refrigerator white teeth.

[Supersedeas]

16. the signs were always there--question is: will he carry the rest of CNN with him

[Berry Cool]

9. Problem with this article:

It equates birthers with Dems who think Kerry lost in 2004 because of voter fraud in Ohio.

I daresay there is much more evidence to prove the voter fraud in Ohio.

[EmilyAnne]

12. I agree! nt

[whistler162]

10. Well if you had been born in Rupert Idaho wouldn't you be

obsessed with Obama's place of birth?

Rupert Idaho v. Honolulu Hawaii hmmmmm.....

[EmilyAnne]

11. Both he and his wife are scared of anything "foreign."

Obama seems foreign, what with the Kenyan father, the early experience in Indonesia and having black skin.
Its scary, scary, scary.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

14. Lou Dobbs should be off the air

[Odin2005]

13. Dobbs in an unapologetic bigot, we know that already.

It's all about race, ALL of it. In the minds of these idiots there is no way a "n****r" could have been elected so there must be a conspiracy. Their sick vision of America is collapsing all around them and they are going insane and psychotic because of it.

[ericgtr]

15. Lou's ratings have been tanking anyway.. it's no wonder why

http://mediamatters.org/blog/200906100040 I guess you can only hate non-whites so much and have people continue to watch your show.