Political Column: Lou Dobbs

Lou Dobbs, the former business and financial analyst for CNN turned “war on the middle class” leader was more well-known for his recent tirades against anything and everything immigration than the rest of his work with the company. When his 29-year career on cable news ended earlier this month, his three decades on television became more of a story about the one-sided news “Lou Dobbs Tonight” transformed into.
His departure was not so much a standout victory for those who oppose Dobb’s xenophobic-beliefs, but a living example of how unrelenting paranoia invades a good portion of cable news.
Dobbs’ is not categorized in the same crop of oft-criticized cable news anchors Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann or Sean Hannity for their obvious unfiltered biases, but if his absence becomes part of his legacy, he will be.
What is cable news known for now, if not for the unregulated “what ifs?” thrown into political conflict? Names like Glenn Beck would not hold the same connotation had they not been allowed to slew whatever comes to mind, given to them in the modern age of cable news.
Why wouldn’t networks like CNN, FOX and MSNBC take advantage of the trend? Nielson ratings indicate that the majority of cable news’s viewers come during prime time, when the aforementioned pundits hit the air.
With the rapid departure of neutral mediums in the news world, political pundits seem to be the only thing still sustaining large success in the industry. Indeed, the nature of it could be  the modern 24-hour news cycle that chokes and concentrates every minor detail of the world’s daily events. The only irony here is that the very same cycle could also be partly responsible for the eventual collapse of the newspaper.
And when the newspaper becomes nothing more than a distant memory, what will those networks become other than outlets for the type of paranoia Dobbs so often expressed? The obvious guess would be that CNN, FOX and MSNBC, in their struggles to bring in younger viewers in the oncoming years, will continue to turn to those pundits, drifting further and further away from the neutral perception that cable news will never achieve.