Some rare good news. Approximately 24 hours after Fox got hit with a lawsuit that had some real teeth to it, this happened:
Lou Dobbs, by far the highest-rated host on the Fox Business Network, has just been canned by the network.
Friday night was his final broadcast, a Fox spokesperson told The Los Angeles Times.Fox representatives did not immediately respond to CNN Business requests for comment, but a source close to Dobbs confirmed that he has been benched by the network.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Dobbs “remains under contract at Fox News but he will in all likelihood not appear on the company’s networks again.”
His wiki entry made me laugh:
Keith P.
My evenings just opened up!
danielx
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving maggot, unless maybe Hannity.
JPL
Maybe Judge Pirro will be next.
lofgren
Lawsuits like this are extremely hard to win, right? Because you have to prove both that the slanderer was lying and also that they knew (or didn’t care) that they were lying? For Fox to be this nervous is very surprising. Can the voting machine company cite the fact that Fox News was reporting the election one way, but Fox opinion commentators were saying the opposite?
danielx
in other news (this is my shocked face):
Elizabelle
I hope Fox News gets sued out of existence.
dmsilev
He named a kid ‘Buffie’? Truly a monster.
debbie
@lofgren:
You bet they can, and they will! These clowns picked the wrong companies to screw around with.
p.a.
@lofgren: WSJ has been doing this news/opinion different planets dichotomy for decades, waaayyyyy before Murdoch bought it.
Alison Rose
@dmsilev: Literally was about to comment the same thing. Get a dog if you want to use a name like that.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Have the ratings for the MyPillow doc been announced yet? //
RSA
Indeed good news!
Off-topic bias: Not that I know anything about Dobbs’s kids, but I think that list of names (Hillary, Chance, Buffie, Michelle, Heather, Jason) is about as white upper-middle class as one could get before the year 2000.
Lofgren
@p.a.: ok, but did they outright slander a corporation, or just private citizens?
West of the Rockies
Old man Dobbs gets the boot. Excellent.
(I use that name because he’s basically the crank neighbor or Scooby Doo villain in personality. Not tryna be ageist.)
Benw
Greetings, Cole. We will take you to our leader
debbie
I wonder if keeping him under contract is a way to shut him up but good?
dmsilev
@Alison Rose: I mean, ‘Buffy’ would have been fine, long and honorable vampire-slaying heritage there. But spelled that way? Fail.
SiubhanDuinne
I’ve mentioned before that my office (Canadian Consulate) used to be located in CNN Center, so we were used to running into CNN on-air talent, executives, even Ted Turner (and later Jane Fonda) fairly often.
During the Olympics in 1996, because traffic was severely curtailed coming into downtown Atlanta, CNN provided charter buses for their entire staff to commute every day, and as a tenant our office was entitled to use those buses. The one for my part of town also happened to be the bus for Lou Dobbs (who worked for CNN at the time). I ended up sitting next to him one morning, and I have never encountered a ruder, more dismissive person in my life. Arrogant, cold, and just gave off waves of being vastly superior to everyone else on the bus. Shouldered his way through the other passengers like a common Donald Trump at a NATO meeting.
Prick. I’m glad Fox got rid of him.
Jay
@Lofgren:
2 Corporations so far.
Mary G
@dmsilev:
@Alison Rose: Count me in. I wouldn’t even name a pet Buffie.
Nelle
Iowa governor, a Trump mini-me, has dropped all mask requirements, social distancing requirements, and, yee-haw, open up them bars with no restrictions. She’s complaining that we aren’t getting enough vaccines and why is Biden punishing us, though half of the vaccines delivered to Iowa are still in the freezers.
Jay
@debbie:
keeping him under contract is a way to prevent him counter suing and minimize the fallout and public scrutiny.
Kinda like in the Soviet Union people just disappeared, personally, politically, historically and from photos.
NotMax
When does The Baio Report begin?
//
Just Some Fuckhead
Hopefully Dobbs will get hospice care for his end stage syphilitic dementia now.
Mary G
Also, more consequences for bad action. Midland TX outlet mrt.com says that Jenny Cudd, the woman who got permission to go to Mexico yesterday, was indicted by the federal grand jury on five additional charges, which are all felonies. Much more serious than the misdemeanors she was charged with before.
I didn’t know that felonies require grand jury indictment. I am sure somewhere US Attorneys are running people through as fast as they can so they can pile on the additional counts, and it gives me a thrill up the leg to think about all the deplorables currently only charged with misdemeanors suddenly realizing that actions sometimes have delayed consequences.
Starboard Tack
@Just Some Fuckhead:
The schaden is very freude tonight.
eponymous
@Mary G:
Looks like she’ll have plenty of time to ruminate on her sins.
AWOL
Time for his cousin, the Rev. Bob Dobbs from the Church of Subgenius, to get his own Fox Hate Show.
trnc
@lofgren:
Hard to say, especially since they have apparently managed to scuttle some lawsuits by arguing in court that all of their shows are entertainment, not news. I hope this will be more difficult to wiggle out of because the number of people who seem to believe the election was stolen is pretty high, which seems like prima facie evidence that the slander could have a real effect on the company since a significant number of those people are in a position to decide on voting equipment purchases. Also, no amount of pink slips signed by a Murdoch can unring that bell.
But you have a good point. Having a division that makes calls about election results would seem to make it difficult to claim they didn’t know whether the lies were lies or not, and I would hope they wouldn’t get the same benefit of the doubt as a crazy uncle who stumbled onto a facebook thread.
burnspbesq
@lofgren:
The killer fact in the Smartmatic case is that defendants knew or should have known that Smartmatic systems and software were not used in any of the states where the results were questioned.
WaterGirl
@lofgren: According to people who should know, like Lawfare and PopeHat, this lawsuit and the Dominion (p?) lawsuit both stand on very solid ground.
Leto
@JPL: I’m fairly certain if Fox turned of the free booze, she’d just wander away on her own.
Jay
@eponymous:
ruminate as in attempt to think on it, I don’t think so.
ruminate as in chew on her cud and make mournful, whiny, lowing sounds, sure.
PsiFighter37
Ever since that fucker got his rocks off on being anti-brown people during the Bush administration, I felt he should never be on a TV show again. I hope Fox realizes this won’t save them, and I hope Smartmatic (and Dominion) take Fox to the house – they are a company that has real money to take.
JustRuss
@lofgren: Not so much. One of the standards is reckless disregard for the truth, so “sure, I made it all up, but for all I knew it could have been true!” isn’t a defense.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: Seems like a bad idea for them to announce that when this person is out of the country.
Jay
cwmoss
@AWOL: J. R. “Bob” Dobbs has too much Slack to take a gig like that.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@SiubhanDuinne: I remember Lou Dobbs having a show on MSNBC (!) when we first started watching the network in order to see the Keith Olbermann “Worst Person in the World” show. I caught a bit of LD’s show, which I thought had to be liberal since it was on MSNBC. But it wasn’t. Hmmm. I never saw it again and it disappeared shortly after we started watching, IIRC. I can also remember when Rachael Maddow was a guest commentator. Was not surprised when she got her own show.
burnspbesq
@WaterGirl:
Mexico will extradite her if asked.
Starboard Tack
@Jay:
John S.
@burnspbesq: Of course they will. Mexiqo is in on the action, and you can hear all about on Tucker Qarlson later tonight.
eponymous
@WaterGirl:
I think her request was refused. I had some bad gobsmacking going on until I saw the update.
Another Scott
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m not at all surprised that he was like that. It looks like he was 50 then. People don’t change – especially not people in their 50s – especially not people who continuously fall upward – unless there’s a reason for them to do so.
Change is hard. Change is scary. People hate it unless they realize there are big benefits.
Why would Lou change?
Thanks for posting the story.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mike in NC
Loud Obbs can apply for a job as a caddy at Mar-A-Lardass.
Roger Moore
@danielx:
The most shocking thing about that is Trump waiting until after the election to loot the campaign.
Scout211
@WaterGirl:
http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2021/images/02/05/us.v.jenny.louise.cudd.pdf
It looks like the order was dated today. The judge okayed it.
SFBayAreaGal
Nanu nanu everyone
NotMax
@burnspbesq
Between the COVID and the caravans, isn’t Mexico empty?
//
John S.
@Scout211: White privilege is a helluva thing. I mean, why should an insurrectionist be denied a work-related bonding retreat in Riviera Maya after a long day of sedition?
Jay
burnspbesq
@John S.:
Accommodations like that aren’t unusual in white collar cases, but this isn’t one of those and shouldn’t be treated like one.
eponymous
@Scout211:
Well, damn. Between that, the snotnose nazi murderer Rittenhouse, the nice young woman with her life ahead of her (Riley something) – lots of white privilege on display.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Starboard Tack: Right? This is what it must feel like when BLM is burning down a city.
trollhattan
ZOMG his kid names make it sound like he’s casting a dead teenager movie (H/T Roger Ebert):
Hillary, Chance, Buffie, Michelle, Heather and Jason.
Mary G
Grifters gotta grift:
Hope some enterprising Twitterattx lives near her restaurant and say how many miles it is from her house and just how much less she was entitled to.
Jay
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
A former colleague just shared this memory:
Mary G
Jay
@Mary G:
the State Board is looking into it, as she claimed massive Campaign Milage during a period where she had no campaign events.
debbie
@Jay:
Dominion and Smartmatic are not fucking around. Their businesses have been destroyed, so they have nothing to lose.
LurkerNoLonger
@Jay: I’ve heard that story before. I think it would make a good movie.
debbie
@burnspbesq:
That’s what I can’t get over. Even after it was made known Smartmatic had no business in AZ or GA, those clowns continued to say they did.
HypersphericalCow
There are some elderly men whose faces tighten as they age. My family is full of them.
and then there are elderly men whose faces melt.
Lou is in the latter category.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
“Kids, Lou has been taken to a farm upstate where he can run free and be happy and play with all the other aging white supremacists….”
Punchy
@cwmoss: Bob Dobbs sounds alot like Bob Dobalina. Mista Bob Dobalina.
SiubhanDuinne
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
i definitely watched Keith O every night, but don’t remember seeing Loud Obbs. Remember Rachel as guest, remember when Morning Joe was on at night (“Scarborough Country,” I think it was called then), even remember Phil Donahue and Aaron Brown (whom I adored).
Ken
@WaterGirl: Better timing would be to file the new charges while she was on the way to the airport, pick her up there, and add “attempting to flee the jurisdiction” to the charges.
scav
So many of these plotlines are far far more satisfying than last seasons. Yum.
Alison Rose
@dmsilev: But imagine being named that and the millions of vampire jokes you’d hear your whole life. No thank you.
Another Scott
One for our Oregonners – ProPublica:
Fingers crossed.
Cheers,
Scott.
PsiFighter37
I do wish the Democrats had treated the $1.9tn offer as the compromise, and had a backup for even more stimulus (basically the HEROES Act) to go when it came to reconciliation. Alas, I hope Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi have plenty of other things lined up for the next time they use reconciliation this fall.
Ascap_scab
FOX Business recently signed Larry Kudlow. It’ll be his show in a week. Hopefully they will also sign Rick Santelli away from CNBC.
Ilieitz
Louis Dobbs was not he is now when he was on MSNBC. Then he got the immigrant bug and he went insane. Loved Olberman and if he didn’t support Rachel today we would still be asking Rachel who?
HumboldtBlue
It appears Biden will keep Trump from intel briefings.
Kent
@Another Scott: Not said in the article, it was Democratic lawmakers and a Democratic governor who first signed this monstrosity into place at the request of the multi-national timber industry and at the expense of Oregon communities.
I grew up in Oregon and they sometimes have a very special bipartisan way of fucking things up. Environmental protection laws are also far weaker in OR than any other west coast state for the same reason.
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
Ah, but do you happen to know how many vampires Buffie has slain?
(I’ll show myself out.)
Miss Bianca
@dmsilev:
I agree. (possibly prejudiced as I am in the middle of a BtVS rewatch right now).
Just Some Fuckhead
@HumboldtBlue: They didn’t give the shitbag intelligence briefings when he was playing president. Why start now?
CaseyL
I bet the reason Dobbs was canceled, and not any of the other named defendants, is because his show was billed as being actual news rather than opinion.
I also bet Fox’s defense against both the Smartmatic and Dominion lawsuits will be that all those other shows are “opinion,” not “news,” and therefore fact-finding standards of journalistic ethics don’t apply. I don’t know if that’ll work, but it’s all they have to go with.
burnspbesq
A friend of mine whose birthday is today reminds us that today would have been Trayvon Martin’s 26th birthday.
Miss Bianca
@trnc: I think it’s also the case that since these are private companies, rather than, say, political figures, the standards for libel are different – easier to prove. (Standard disclaimer: IANAL)
Jay
HumboldtBlue
@WaterGirl:
That’s my understanding as well, because these folks weren’t just casting doubt on the machines and such, they were openly declaring the corporations were in on massive voter fraud.
Ken
“Cut them all down as quickly as possible” is kind of like education.
HumboldtBlue
@burnspbesq:
There was a photo shared on Twitter of him as an 11-year-old at Space Camp.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne: Aaron Brown was the local anchor of the evening news when I was in grad school in Seattle, loved what he brought to the broadcasts. I was so happy when he was on CNN.
HumboldtBlue
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Indeed.
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid:
How funky is your chicken?
cain
@Mike in NC:
He will be heading to OANN. Unless of course they crash and burn. But I suspect that lawsuit is going to follow him everywhere. He’s better off retiring. Dick.
Inventor
@Just Some Fuckhead: I was thinking the same thing. Perhaps feed him disinformation to pass on the the Russians. The problem, of course, is that he would get it all wrong and might accidentally give good info by mistake.
Inventor
@cain: The “Only Anglo Nutbags Network” may not be able to afford good enough lawyers to put Dobbs on the payroll.
AnotherBruce
I think Nancy Pelosi snuck that “Conspiracy Theorist” in that Dobbs blurg.
WaterGirl
@eponymous: Oh, I had read that her request had been approved. Maybe they changed their mind when the felony charges came through?
Just Some Fuckhead
@cain: Fox Entertainment still has him under contract.
cain
@Another Scott:
They’ll need to be careful about the messaging. The money coming from that should be used to benefit timber folks in some way otherwise it will be demagogued by the right/GOP. They are getting crazier now – just like in all the other states.
Jay
Link
Omnes Omnibus
@lofgren:
This is only the case if the victim is a “public figure.”
mrmoshpotato
via Kurt Eichenwald
RIP
Mike in NC
@HumboldtBlue: Trump and Prince Jared spent four years funneling intel to Vlad. Turn off that revenue stream.
cain
@Kent:
Yeah, in fact most of the environmental protections was by a Republican governors back in the 70s. There were some excellent Republicans back then.
cain
@CaseyL:
It’s not going to work this time because they also are involved in election stuff. So they can’t claim entertainment if people go to them for election news.
Even if you are entertainment, you still can’t be talking whatever shit. I think Dominion have them by the balls.
Just Some Fuckhead
Great news, Biden put the guy who ran the incredibly efficient and successful FEMA death camps in charge of the nation’s Covid-19 supply chain.
cain
@Jay:
I am sure if they ‘pinky promise’ not to do bad things – it will be just fine!
Aziz, light!
@Ken: Actually the OFRI is very good at “greenwashing” in the array of well-designed publications they put out, many of them aimed at teachers. These put an environmental gloss on timber industry goals.
cain
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Ah right, so they’ll just what.. keep paying him to STFU and retire?
cain
@Jay:
This is why local news is so important.
Nelle
@?BillinGlendaleCA: We must have been in Seattle at the same time (I was there from 77-85).
Jay
Eunicecycle
@Just Some Fuckhead: I was just watching a clip of him on Rachel, and suddenly flashed back probably 20 years when a rubber glove factory in my town closed. It was said at the time to be the last maker of medical gloves in the country, which could be dangerous in a global health emergency. The manufacturing was sent overseas (maybe Malaysia?)
Just Some Fuckhead
@cain: I imagine they will try to get him back on the air at some point as he is their highest rated show host.
HumboldtBlue
Here’s some good news, Fergie, the old dog, was reunited with family.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Nelle: Yup, I was at the U from 82-85.
raven
@HumboldtBlue: Some friends found a doggie on a hike yesterday and I put pix on a couple of local Facebook Pages. A friend saw it and realized there was a post from a Hispanic Car dealership who had lost their dog and they were reunited!!! The post was in Spanish so we were lucky someone saw it and put 2 and 2 together!
raven
I’ve posted about the young man who lost his mom, grandmother and sister in a fire. The community (and some people here, thank you) raised over $200K for him. Now he’s getting to go to the Super Bowl!!!’
Miss Bianca
@Ken: Oh, evil. Just the way I like it. >:>
Miss Bianca
@Jay: WTF with these people. “Secretly executing ‘the Deep State’ in front of the WH”? How fucking secret could that execution be? WTF does that even mean?
I really worry about these people. There’s just no there, there anymore.
Ascap_scab
Lou Dobbs and Chris Matthews should go ice fishing in ‘Grumpiest Old Men’.
StringOnAStick
@Miss Bianca: The blood lust is just plain creepy. I mean who imagines stuff like what they claim happens to child victims? How could you even come up with such a hideous idea. Sick, sick, sick.
SFBayAreaGal
@Miss Bianca: I love BtVS. One of my favorite lines from Season 7
“Of course I’m scared. Last time we were here, 33.3 bar percent of us were flayed alive.”
HumboldtBlue
@raven:
Nice!
Here is Josh Marshall hashing out the Fox lawsuits and Dobbs’ canceling, makes for an interesting read.
quakerinabasement
Gee, what a shame.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Bingeing Brockmire on Hulu. It’s fantastic…..
lofgren
@Omnes Omnibus: Shouldn’t a corporation count as a public figure automatically?
In any event, what is the standard for a non-public figure?
SWMBO
@StringOnAStick: My niece got into QANON for a while. She joined a few of the pages and read some of the most stomach churning stories. She kept trying to whip me into a frenzy over child trafficking. This went on for a couple of months. I read some of their soft core pedophilia. And I started pointing out to her that this was the pedophile equivalent of letters to the editor at Hustler magazine. She was furious with me for not believing these horrible people. Then the FTFNYT story broke about it being a scam and all. Took a couple of weeks to talk her into really looking at this. She eventually came around and dropped the group. Shortly thereafter several people in that group were arrested. At least I talked her out of blindly following these assholes.
lofgren
@JustRuss: I am pretty sure that you cannot sue somebody for slander making true statements.
HumboldtBlue
There are simply no words. There are no fucking words.
On a brighter note, I made shepherds pie for the first time last night and I nailed it.
HumboldtBlue
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
It really is.
brantl
I’ve probably only seen Lou Dobbs 3 times in my life, and inside of watching him for 30 seconds the first time, I could tell he was an ignorant, condescending asshole. Glad he’s dust, and bad dust, at that.
Jay
@HumboldtBlue:
how many cups of peas,
how many cups of mashed potatoes,
how many shepherds? ( not german I hope)
And did you broil the top for the crunch?
brantl
@HumboldtBlue: Anybody notice how the picture of stump that she keeps fondling is obviously wearing a toupe’?
Jay
cwmoss
@Punchy: Resisting the urge to look it up. Is that Firesign or Cheech & Chong?
TS (the original)
@Jay:
begosh!! Everyone in Australia is getting a “free” vaccination (we pay through taxes) – mind you nothing happening until the end of this month at the earliest.
something fabulous
HA HA MARGIN BREAKING HA TIL FALLING OVER WHOOPS MORE HA!
Jay
Arclite
Is it wrong of me to hope that Smartmatic sues Fox News out of existence, a la Gawker?
Jay
Jay
@TS (the original):
yeah, as soon as there is enough vaccine to cover the top categories, I am going to get it at work, for free.
Another Scott
The Virginia Senate is in a 13 hour session, headed up by an 81 year old (Dick Saslaw) whose birthday is today. A selfie by my state senator. They’re working hard, and working smart.
Elections have consequences!
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
Cheers,
Scott.
Amir Khalid
@TS (the original):
Same here in Malaysia.
Arclite
@CaseyL:
The flip side of that is that libel requires that you know you’re wrong when you make the statement. It’s going to be hard for the opinion blowhards at Fox to argue they didn’t know it was wrong when the news part of the company was saying the opposite thing.
Danielx
@Another Scott:
Well, of course! Bipartisanship and both sides wrapped into one, what could be better?
Suzanne
@Jay: I would presume that if some people actually thought executions were occurring in front of the WH, at least someone would go watch and report back? WTF. I can in no way climb into the mind of people who literally have zero factual basis in reality.
Gvg
@Roger Moore: read further. He didn’t of course. Just that it is apparently less justifiable after he lost. Some of it was after but it started in 2017. As anyone here would have expected.
Another Scott
ScienceMag – Lyme disease bacteria like white-footed mice, don’t like skinks:
Naturally, climate change is upsetting the boundaries, with implications for Lyme disease infections…
Cheers,
Scott.
Gvg
@TS (the original): it’s free here too. Something is wrong in the story. Either the hospital is breaking rules, or the story is a lie. We may hear eventually.
Benw
@HumboldtBlue: congrats on nailing the pie. Hmmm maybe that sounds weird
:)
Yutsano
I’mma let y’all finish, but this is my first comment from my brand new computer. I’m quite chuffed.
WaterGirl
@something fabulous: Not sure what that means, but it did send me looking to see if there was a long string of text above that might be breaking the margins.
Found a naked URL from Jay that looked like a good candidate, so I fixed that.
WaterGirl
@Yutsano: Congratulations!!!
HumboldtBlue
@Yutsano:
It’s like lotion on chapped skin, I learned that with new laptop.
HumboldtBlue
@Jay:
Pfft, like an ingénue like me would say.
mrmoshpotato
@Yutsano:
Good on ya, mate!
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue:
And how does one go about trying to rub a new laptop into the skin? :)
HumboldtBlue
@mrmoshpotato:
It rubs the code into its skin. And then, google happens.
Ivan X
@Arclite: If that happens, I’m going to OANN.
Arclite
@Ivan X: I just listened to an interview with the lawyers representing Smartmatic on The Daily podcast. They went after Fox because they can prove that with the widest audience, Fox did the greatest damage. It took months of research to put the complaint together. So they’re still considering action against OANN and Newsmax.
This lawyer is the same one that won the “pink slime” suit against ABC.
Death Panel Truck
@cwmoss: Neither. It’s from “Zilch,” a track from the Monkees’ Headquarters LP. Each Monkee repeats a nonsense phrase over and over, faster and faster.
rikyrah
Discovery is going to be LIT!!!!
It should be fantastic!
Sue sue sue
They have so much video evidence???
rikyrah
@danielx:
?????
Like we didn’t know that
The Pale Scot
@Jay:
When Rich Fascists Almost Took Over America
God Save Gen. Smedley