Lou Dobbs, responding to Condi Rice, says Americans really do know how to talk about race, immediately proves himself wrong:
Atrios: "I'm actually happy to put "cotton ..." in the 'stupid ass shit that comes out of your mouth on the teevee sometimes' category, but the rest of what Dobbs said is really what's offensive."
Lou Dobbs was wrong to criticize Secretary Rice -- in fact, he should have treated her as an ally in the point he was trying to make -- but Atrios is wrong that Dobbs said anything otherwise offensive. One could look at Atrios' reaction and say, not only can you not talk about race without recrimination, you can't talk about talking about race without recrimination. Atrios is the anti-Obama on this race stuff.
Stumbling over "cotton-pickin'" is, however, hilarious.
Posted by: Percy Walker | Mar 31, 2008 at 11:44 AM
No surprise there. Dabe Neiwert has been dissectinig Lou's racism for quite a while now....yet so many otherwise intelligent people still think that Dobbs is a decent journalist.
Posted by: Coturnix | Mar 31, 2008 at 12:31 PM
That's Dave, not Dabe....
Posted by: Coturnix | Mar 31, 2008 at 12:32 PM
Great. Dobbs' populism is awful, but let's skip over the merits of his positions and focus on his supposed racism.
Posted by: Percy Walker | Mar 31, 2008 at 12:44 PM
Guess I just missed it altogether. I was waiting for the offensive part that never came.
Posted by: Spag | Mar 31, 2008 at 01:35 PM
Me too, Sam.
I agree with Percy that the "cotton-pickin" stumble was pretty amusing, but Atrios has a different threshold for offensiveness than I.
Posted by: David Hoggard | Mar 31, 2008 at 03:24 PM
The rest of Atrios' comment: "He's teeing off on the fact that Rice actually suggested that maybe this country, as it was founded, was a bit problematic with respect to race and then goes on to complain that black people are always telling him what he can and can't say."
I don't know that what Dobbs says is offensive, unless you find missing the point offensive. He's ignoring the substance of Rice's remarks and launching into an off-topic rant instead. She's talking about something real, he's changing the subject.
In any case, damn, that cotton pickin' moment is hilarious.
Posted by: Ed Cone | Mar 31, 2008 at 04:25 PM
Give Dobbs his due ... the man pulled it back. That was something to see. He had "cotton puh ..." all the way out past his nose and he into the wild and he somehow covered it up with other words while lunging out there and stuffing it back in his mouth. Thrilling to watch. Talk about diving for the loose ball. Honestly, that was a Hansbrough move. I applauded when I wasn't laughing.
Posted by: Jim Rosenberg | Mar 31, 2008 at 04:40 PM
That was hysterical -- but he shouldn't have pulled back, not if he really believed his larger point about being able to say anything about race. What a fraud. I've long suspected he doesn't believe one-tenth of the stuff he says -- he just saw a vacuum and filled it.
Posted by: JAT | Apr 01, 2008 at 12:08 PM
If the line wasn't offensive, why do you suppose CNN scrubbed it from the transcript?
Posted by: Ged Maheux | Apr 01, 2008 at 12:18 PM