Dropping Dobbs

As you may be aware yesterday we joined a broad coalition of groups in launching a campaign to get CNN to drop Lou Dobbs from their thoughtful and respected airwaves.   The site can be found at dropdobbs.com.  Check it out, watch the video if you have a few minutes and add your name to the petition in the take action section asking CNN and Dobb's advertisers to take a stand.

This kind of campaign is not the usual thing NDN does.  But the decline in civil discourse that we've seen this year (what I call the rising "politics of intolerance") and Dobbs' increasingly wild and irresponsible performance on the air of late convinced me - and the whole NDN team - that it was time to take a stand.  Lou Dobbs is free to say whatever he wants on his own website, in his books, on his own radio show.  I am all for free speech.  But he should not be given a daily platform on the globally respected CNN, or on a brand owned by the well-regarded and innovative Time Warner.  It is time for them to drop Lou Dobbs.

There is a precedent for something like this - what Disney/ABC did when Rush Limbaugh was bounced from Monday Night Football for racially offensive remarks.   Mainstream, respectable network bouncing a hate talker off their air because it simply didn't fit their brand, their values, their vision for America.  Every day CNN and Time Warner keep Dobbs on their air they are telling us a great deal about their values - that they care more about making money than they do about creating a civil and just America; that they are willing to tolerate divisive, ignorant talk to make a few extra bucks here and there.  I'm not sure about you but that is not how I see CNN or Time Warner.  Dobbs is antithetical to their brands, and it is time for them to make clear that they believe this is so.  Leave all that crazy talk to News Corp, am radio, blogs and the angry, intolerant right.  But please my friends take Lou Dobbs off CNN.  Your brands, and the country, will be better for it.

I offered up some thoughts, and some video, on all this Dobbs and Beck stuff a few weeks ago.  For me this new campaign is about taking a stand against the rising politics of intolerance we've seen spread across the country in recent months.  As a nation we are better than the screamers, and it is time that those of us who believe that to do more, to take a stand - and in this case lets start by getting Lou Dobbs off CNN.