The CNN Loon

Tom Friedman Drops the Dime on Lou Dobbs: In the student's question, "he references Dobbs and asks about 'the nativist spirit' and protectionism, asks about the way issues are presented, and whether this is all more about mindset than about policy.

Friedman, three time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of bestsellers "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and more recently "The World is Flat" (which sold a million and a half copies, far more than Dobbs' viewership -- or ours, by the way), begins his answer. "One of the problems", he begins, explaining that we need leaders who can explain the complexity, not who will just stir the pot, "is we have politicians that are making us stupid, who are throwing sand in our eyes." But then he goes on: "And then you have a blithering idiot like Lou Dobbs, in my view, who's using the platform of CNN in...the frame of a news show. This is not news. And so we have a political class not making sense of the world for people and that's why the public...is so agitated."