Posted by
Rick Amato on Monday, October 23, 2006 3:33:14 AM
This past weekend I had the opportunity to interview
Lou Dobbs as a guest on
my radio show.I found the interview fascinating on several levels and consider it as one of my more memorable interviews.
First off on a personal level, I have always been viewer of his programs. As someone with a financial background (I began my career as a financial advisor with
Merrill Lynch) Lou Dobbs, along with
Louis Rukeyser, in my mind set the gold standard for television financial reporting in America. During the late 80’s and 90’s stockbrokers and financial advisors across the country frequently based their view of the financial world on what it was they heard nightly on ‘
CNN Lou Dobbs Money Line’. The show was common topic of early morning conversation (and argument) in coffee rooms of brokerage offices across America.
While I have had the privilege of appearing as a guest on ‘
Lou Dobbs Tonight’, this was his first time appearing as
my guest. Aside from the obvious, radio is very different from television. As fabulous a median as television is, talk radio by its very nature allows for a much more personal and intimate experience between the host, guest and audience.
Therein lies the beauty of this interview. This was Lou Dobbs as many may have never seen him before. Passionate, fire in the belly and dead-on candid
on the receiving end of questions.My listeners and I learned several new things about Mr. Dobbs. The first of which was ‘why, how and when did he go from financial and business reporting to that of a cultural warrior’? After all he had been branded so strongly in our minds as a business journalist and then one day he seemed to re-appear taking on illegal immigration,
job outsourcing and the like.
To this he attributes the emotional events of September 11th,
corporate corruption scandals and what he sees as the vanishing
American dream for the middle-class. These events led him to become what he calls an
advocacy journalist.And boy has he ever advocated. He has taken on our nations
illegal immigration policies (or lack thereof), U.S.
trade policies which have eliminated or outsourced American middle class manufacturing jobs and
federal deficits which he calls an ‘estate tax on the middle class and their children’.
Confidently, he pointed out that because of his background and grasp of the subject matter, it is difficult- if not impossible- for CEO’s , trade policy makers and elected officials to appear as his guest and ‘skirt around the truth’.
In his new book -
War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back- he takes aim at both the republican and democratic parties and the special interest groups which they are beholden to.
The book is an excellent blue print for anyone concerned about under representation in Washington and what to do about it.
Recently CNN announced it is giving a newly prominent role to Dobbs including coverage alongside
Anderson Cooper and
Wolf Blitzer of November’s midterm elections. It was also announced that
‘Lou Dobbs Tonight’ is up 22 percent in viewers this year over last, a bigger increase than any show on CNN or Fox News Channel.
American classics always seem to manage to stay in vogue.