By Ralph De La Cruz
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
File this post under, “When words come home to roost.”
When a sudden, unexplainable and truly transformative event occurs and is witnessed by the faithful, Catholics call it a miracle.
And I suppose that might best describe what happened Thursday on Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC show, The Last Word.
Lou Dobbs
Former CNN commentator Lou Dobbs, who made a career of spitting out the words illegal aliens as often as he could, was on the show facing off against Isabel Macdonald, a reporter for The Nation magazine.
Someone at The Nation thought it might be fun to check out Dobbs’ employees. Dobbs, the champion of immigration-crisis groups such as The Minutemen and the Tea Party, had always been particularly shrill about the horrors that should be visited upon the people who employed “illegal aliens.”
So Macdonald worked for a year on an investigative piece about the workers on Dobbs’ two multimillion properties — one in New Jersey and the other in West Palm Beach — as well as his horse stables in Wellington (a tony horse community southwest of West Palm Beach) and Vermont.
And what do you know? Turns out she spoke to five workers who — yep — had entered the country without papers. Illegal aliens. One man said he had specifically crossed the border illegally because of a promised job at a Dobbs property.
Macdonald’s piece was titled “Lou Dobbs, American Hypocrite.”
Macdonald’s and Dobbs’ back-and-forth could’ve won Dancing With The Stars. She obviously felt uncomfortable in front of the camera – and Dobbs. And, despite his decades on-air, Lou didn’t seem quite right either.
Maybe it was because he wasn’t wearing a tie. Or the sudden redness in his face. Or…
Wait…
I spotted it.
It was The Transformation, which was confirmed later in the segment:
Lou Dobbs has stopped using the A word. He now says “illegal immigrants,” rather than “illegal aliens.”