DVDs of terror
On Sunday, CNN broadcast a news segment implying that Nepali workers who left their jobs at an Alabama DVD plant were security threats, based on little more than their ethnicity. Reporter Bill Tucker from Lou Dobbs Tonight interviewed a nutty local politician throwing around insinuations of terrorism. The segment accused the workers of stealing furniture and vanishing en masse. But Tucker never bothered to ask any of the Nepalis who continued to work at the Cinram plant just what had happened to their colleagues.
Turns out the workers, who were being idled and underpaid, received letters saying their visas were unrestricted by employer. They left to find new work and send money to their families (via SAJA):
… a few weeks after the first of more than 200 guest workers from Nepal began labeling and packing DVDs at Cinram’s Huntsville plant, a letter marked “Personal and Confidential” arrived at the workers’ apartments. The short form letter stated that employment was at-will of the company, adding that: “Employees are free to relinquish their positions at any time, with or without cause…”
Another mistake in the reports that have so far come out of Huntsville is the impression that the 100 or so Nepali workers walked out en masse. In reality, it appears that Nepali workers had been trickling out of Huntsville for weeks… [Link]
And that missing furniture? It was plastic patio furniture, and it was still there:
 |
|
Dobbs: avuncular, but oh-so-dangerous |
“We moved furnitures around from room to the other, but we haven’t stolen anything… It was very humiliating for us to go to work when the media reported that we were thieves…” [Link]
Yes, to the Lou Dobbs alumnus who put together this fear-mongering and vaguely racist segment, the last Hindu kingdom is a major bastion of Islamic fundamentalist suicide bombers who consider it a good use of their time doing low-paid manual labor in Alabama. The Dobbs brand of nativism, xenophobia, reflexive protectionism and terror hype is tiresome. Is he a CNN host, or is he a Fox News asset?
It is the sickest kind of behavior for a nation to invite over immigrants to underpay them, then smear them as terrorists when they don’t play ball.
on Thursday, February 7th, 2008, 1:25 pm in Economics, Issues, Media, TV, Video clips › 
Email this
› 
Facebook this
› 
Reddit this
› Link
› Reader links
In an otherwise great line up of newspersons (even Larry King is OK) I find it shocking that CNN has Lou Dobbs who frankly has his head inside his ass when it comes to immigration.
I would like someone to dig up some dirt on Lou, because his baseless immigration tirades have to stem from some old fear, misconception or something more sinister.
Lou Dobbs was an OK financial correspondent. He should have stuck to that.
Or maybe CNN is playing a larger game by showing that they are not biased and do have stupid conservatives too on their staff.
Any which way CNN is the loser.
Jai Nepal !!
What did Lou Dobbs do before he spent five hours a week turning news about swarthy people into self-righteous, racist-tinged screeds?
Man lack of knowledge makes people assholes sometimes. I wish folks were only conscious of how heavily dependent our lives are on the immigrant workforce — legal and undocumented.
But ignorance is the latest trend sweeping the nation. I mean did anyone notice how many “concerns” were raised in that one little clip?: These folks stealing jobs from Americans, terrorism, theft, what’s going to happen when their visa expire, etc. The last sentence from Kitty is such a money thing to say to fuel the fear/ignorance: “There are so many open questions in this entire story, its almost preposterous.” Sheesh.
Thanks for covering this Manish. I had no idea. The fear mongering and use of half-truths (and some blatant lies) to whip up xenophobia is absolutely shocking.
Lou Dobbs is sick pathetic loser.
This loser Dobbs was a business reported before and in 2000 he became a CEO of some company. In less than 2 years the company went bankrupt and Mr.Loser found out that running a business is much harder than reading teleprompter.
I’m surprised he didn’t throw in leprosy like he did with the Mexicans. I find Lou Dobbs almost worse than people like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh - at least the latter two are openly conservative shill blowhards. Lou disguises his right-wing screeds as factual news on a semi-credible news network.
I mean and plus, I love the implication that Osama bin Laden’s priorities are:
1) Washington DC
2) New York
3) DVD factory in Huntsville, Alabama