Exporting America

Lou Dobbs continues nightly his vitriolic rant, Exporting America. "One of the loudest spokesmen for this emerging xenophobic populism" is the characterization of Lou Dobbs in a reasoned article titled Lou's Blues.

Lou's got a new schtick; he "names names" of companies accused of "exporting america" by outraged viewers, but only after confirmation of their guilt by CNN's crack staff of investigators. As the list grows to include seemingly every American company of any size, it becomes apparent that the United States of America benefits substantially from globalization. It's hard to single out any company by putting its name on a list of the who's who of American industry and commerce. The only one embarrassed in the end might be Lou Dobbs, as this list gets too long to recite in the attention span of his viewers. Already the credits stop rolling before Lou can recite them all. Maybe the list will grow into a permanent "crawl" at the bottom of the screen for the full hour of the program.

A fair and balanced view of the subject is presented by Greg Siskind in a newsletter to his clients, in which he writes, in part:

CNN's Lou Dobbs and many others are lumping all of these stories together and calling for an end of the "exporting of America." This is a backlash against an evolution toward globalization that has accelerated in recent decades as technological advances, the liberalization of economies and the reform of political systems around the world have created a truly global marketplace for goods, services and ideas. America has benefited from the changes more than most countries though you would hardly appreciate this if you only watched the news.

As Julian Sanchez says in Reason, "Dobbs, of course, is an educated fellow, and presumably familiar with these arguments. But providing a voice for those eager to blame a Dark Other for the world's ills can only be good for ratings. And that, at least, ensures that Lou gets to keep his job."