Lou Dobbs and CNN

I have been traveling a fair bit recently and due to some untimely delays, I was trapped in the airport. For about four hours I was forced to watch the Lou Dobbs show on CNN. The first question I ask is "Is Lou Dobbs a Journalist or a commentator?" and second "Who allows this show to remain on the air?"

CNN's ratings continue to decline steadily. They have mixed up their anchors and have let good folks leave like Bill Hemmer who is now on Fox. The placement of Lou Dobbs for multiple hours is almost like torture.

In the four hours I saw, he aggressively attacked Congress, Bush, The White House, American Policy, Big Business, you name it. Every story had a snide comment. In his analysis of a Sean Calebs story about affordable college tuition, he said "... again this government attacks the middle class and does not stop public institutions from raising tuition. There has been no Katrina, no crisis, yet tuition has risen steadily year after year

When Calebs said that the Administration was not looking the other way, rather that Education Secretary Spellings was mounting a commission to look into the affordability of college, Dobbs said in an aside, "Oh great, another commission! That is getting something done. Secretary look at the tuition hikes for no reason and you will see no middle class families being able to afford college. That Ms secretary you get for no charge."

When discussing an issue over the war on terror, Dobbs characterized it like Vietnam. The Rove/Libby scandal like Watergate.

It is amazing. In my experience and when I was in college, I learned that this is not Journalism, this is propaganda and commentary. I thought we got rid of this when Rather retired.