A defense of Lou Dobbs

David Leonhardt goes on an anti-Lou Dobbs rant in today's NY Times where he accuses Lou Dobbs of lying. Leonhardt loses this debate:

For one thing, Mr. Dobbs has a somewhat flexible relationship with reality. He has said, for example, that one-third of the inmates in the federal prison system are illegal immigrants. That’s wrong, too. According to the Justice Department, 6 percent of prisoners in this country are noncitizens (compared with 7 percent of the population).

Notice how Leonhardt has changed the subject. Dobbs was talking about federal prisoners, and Leonhardt is talking about the entire state plus federal prison population. What a great way to accuse someone of playing loose with facts. Play loose yourself in rebuttal. Furthermore, in the linked to transcript of the show, it was clearly stated that they were talking about non-citizens and only assuming, probably correctly, that a large percentage of those non-citizens were in the country illegally when they were charged with their crimes.

Most of Leonhardt's column is devoted to complaining about a guest on Dobbs' show who apparently misunderstood how Leprosy statistics are reported. Per this Wikipedia article, Leprosy statistics are commonly reported as people who are registered as having the disease (which is a chronic condition) and not the number of new cases. I agree that there's no excuse that the guest didn't understand what she was talking about, but this is hardly the first time I've seen a guest on a TV news show who didn't know what she was talking about. To be fair to talk show hosts and producers, it's really impossible to ensure that everything a guest will say in spontaneous live discussion will turn out to be true.

Newspapers routinely get their statistics wrong and newspapers have much less of an excuse because there is time to check facts before printing an article. My previous two blog posts talked about misleading statistics in a NY Times op-ed piece, and that's hardly the first time I've blogged about such problems. My own personal faith in the accuracy of any numbers in newspapers ended when the Washington Post reported, as the gospel truth, that Jessica Cutler was 24, when she was really 26. The news media routinely reports uncorroborated statements as if they were fact. In other words, instead of stating "Jessica Cutler told us she is 24", the paper will state "Jessica Cutler is 24." The first statement is true, the second statement is false.

Of course the Jessica Cutler lies are minor compared with major gaffes like reporting that all of treasures of the National Museum in Baghdad were looted when in reality the majority of pieces had been stored in safe repositories before the war started.

So in conclusion, I give a big thumbs down to Leonhardt for making a big deal about nothing.

Comments

[SFG]

Lou Dobbs is anti-immigration and anti-outsourcing, two things the elite of neither party likes. I'm not surprised he gets so much crap. Remember Ross Perot?

[Peter]

Dobbs' claim about a dramatic increase in leprosy cases is absolute bunk. There is absolutely no truth to it, none at all.

I'd write more, but for some strange reason my fingers are falling off.

It isn't just leprosy, but TB. Immigrants carry really nasty strains of that shit. But we are not allowed to criticise that because immigrants are wonderful and they only benefit this nation, doing jobs American won't do and contributing to a diverse and multicultural paradise. If you find yourself coughing up blood, don't be alarmed. It is just a benefit of immigration!

[IC]

Running country is a very intellectual demanding task. Only the smartest people can run country well. Elites should rule over regular or mentally challenged people. Whenever regular folks have powers over elites like NAZI Germany, there is disaster waiting. Lou Dobbs is against Capitalism on the right and against communism on the left, just like Hitler's national socialism. Yes, it is popular for hitler in germany and dobbs in USA. But his mentality only leads to hate and disaster. We should ever let USA under elites who are smarter enough to have real interest for country not just short term popularity.

[Rob]

IC,

Are you a native english speaker?

[anon]

Running country is a very intellectual demanding task.

Exactly. But the implications of this are subtler than you might think.

HS,
What did you expect from the NYT? Most of the people that read it are liberal idiots anyway and could give a shit less if Leonhardt lied and played word games in a debate about immigration. That is because liberals lie and play word games when it comes to any immigration debate (or a debate about minorities, education, foreign policy, healthcare, taxes, etc...).
And IC, I don't know if you are from the US, but you write like a Russian would speak (no offense). Anyway, trust me, you don't want American elites running the United States. Many, if not most are jackass leftists who don't know a fucking thing about how regular people live and they certainly don't share the average man's concerns, especially if the average man is white. I also include our current President in this collection of clowns. Just look at the immigration debate for a great example. Or just open the NY Times for many more.

[nobody]

Why is there an assumption that the elite would care about the ordinary person? Those individual who seeks power don't always necessary do it for the greater good but for their own vanity. The founding fathers of this country were enought smart to know that they can do is to create a limited government and let people decide whats best for their communities.

Nobody,
that is exactly the problem. If the elites just left me and the average guy alone, I would't give a damn what they do to satisfy their own vanity and if they just kept to themselves. But they don't leave us alone. You know as well as anybody else that satisfying their vanity involves jerking me around and taking my money. Limited gov't is out the window for the present and probably for a good time into the future as well.

[SFG]

The thing I never got about you conservatives who claim to be all anti-elitist and against liberal elitists...what do you call CEOs of just about every non-media industry and the whole Republican half of Congress? They're not a self-dealing elite that screws the common man?

[SFG]

Bush is a leftist? Both him and the leftists want to increase immigration, but his social and economic conservatism makes him hated on the left. Commenters on leftie websites commonly fantasize about killing him in the most painful way possible.