Lou Dobbs? Why am I attacking this lovable guy, you ask? It’s simple really: to make a point about the subtle but prevalent use of hateful language to influence public discourse in America. Lou Dobbs, like many of his like-minded conservative commentators on the airwaves and the Internet, has mastered the use of linguistic shortcuts to rally the uninformed behind his ideological causes: illegal aliens, socialists, liberals. The list goes on. This is intellectually dishonest and reflects a certain ethical corruption in mainstream journalism.
What differentiates my headline from Lou’s use of words is subtlety. My headline is a frontal assault. It’s a straightforward if not a bit harsh statement about CNN’s token conservative. It’s also easily dismissed as a possibly rash and rude comment about a member of the pundit class. What if I had called him a communist or a liberal? If he had even a scintilla of a leaning to the left of center, I suppose that would have some impact.
What’s important here is that language matters. Words cast about in the public domain have meaning and can move mountains. For instance, labeling someone a “terrorist” adds gravitas to the public discourse about that person. During the presidential race, it was suggested that Rashid Khalidi, who had a passing professional relationship with Barack Obama, was a terrorist. The word stuck.
It’s worth noting that these characterizations of Mr. Khalidi are false. A little digging reveals that he was an adviser to the Palestinian delegation in Madrid in 1991. The way the conference proceeded was by the US and Israel selecting the Palestinian delegation (not from the PLO), and, in turn, the PLO would OK or object to the delegate. Khalidi was chosen because he is from a prominent Palestinian family from Jerusalem and is a renown scholar of the Middle East. At the time, Rashid Khalidi had been extremely critical of the PLO, which was later affirmed in his scholarly work.[1. NoQuarter.com]
What’s interesting here is that the word “terrorist” sweeps away this entire discussion of the man and elevates his status to that of an anti-American monster.
Back to Lou Dobbs.
He is not the first conservative commentator to use the subtlety of language to polarize otherwise rational discussion. On any given evening, I watch various news programs. I will occasionally land on CNN. Thursday night, just after the presidential elections, Lou was ranting about the socialist presidency of Barack Obama. Apparently, President-Elect Obama had the temerity to suggest that there needs to be some balance in the way in which Americans are treated. Public corporations and the wealthiest individuals in America have received more than their fair share of tax breaks and benefits from the economy. It’s now time for ordinary Americans to get a share of the action. That, according to Lou Dobbs, is socialism. Forget about drilling down until he reaches the facts.
Now if he were to call Obama a democrat or a republican, that wouldn’t amount to much. However, the word “socialism” is a rallying cry for conservatives. A short cut of sorts to quickly define, in the most pejorative of terms, a reversal of policies that actually harmed most working Americans for the last eight years. It doesn’t matter that Obama is not a socialist and has no avowed socialist leanings. Perhaps Lou would be more honest with himself and the listening public if he used the “N” word instead. After all, he is not trying to further the public discourse on economic change. He is trying to inflict harm on the integrity of our new president.
This use of language has been the hallmark of the conservative wing of the Republican Party for more than a decade. On Tuesday, they lost the battle if not the war for their cause. Their use of language as a weapon in the culture war to secure the American landscape for their cause has been severely wounded.
Will Lou Dobbs put down his linguistic weapons? Will he begin a real dialogue about the issues that concern him?
Probably not.
Good night Lou.
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