Lou Dobbs and Horse Show Hypocrisy

This weekend my wife, my mother, and I went to the New Jersey State Fair. While I was there, I learned that fair included a horse show. According to my farm show brochure, one of the horse show events with the biggest prizes is the $10,000 Lou Dobbs Tonight Show Jumping Hall of Fame Amateur-Owner Classic, named after CNN commentator Lou Dobbs. Now what gets me is that Lou Dobbs claims to be this populist tribune of the middle class, but he obviously has lots of money to throw around on the economically elite hobby of amateur horse raising. According to this gossip column in the Philadelphia Daily News, Lou's daughter Hillary Dobbs won several awards at the Devon Horse Show shortly after finishing her finals at Harvard. Ironically, Hillary won those awards while riding a German pony paid with money that her father earns by bashing immigrants for stealing American jobs! (What happened, Mr. Buy American? American ponies not good enough for your daughter, Lou?)

Lou Dobbs went from being a pioneer of financial journalism on cable news to turning into an anti-immigrant blowhard and bully. Yet, as he gets richer jumping on the anti-immigrant bandwagon, he still funds a subculture of rich amateur horse enthusiasts who rely on illegal immigrant labor. According to Vicky Moon's book, A Sunday Horse: Inside the Grand Prix Show Jumping Circuit, "This melting pot of international equine aficionados does not include the countless numbers of illegal Spanish-speaking immigrants who shovel the 40 tons of poop a day." Yet no matter how much poop those show horses produce, it still doesn't stink as much as the hypocrisy of Lou Dobbs calling for the mass deportation of immigrants who have made his daughter's opulent lifestyle possible.