CNN's Headline News has hired radio talkshow host Glenn Beck to host a one-hour primetime show, according to a Daily Variety report (1/17/06). Variety quotes CNN Headline News president Ken Jautz's description of Beck: "Glenn's style is self-deprecating, cordial; he says he'd like to be able to disagree with guests and part as friends. It's conversational, not confrontational."

As Klein leaves, I can't help but remember that back in 2005 he explained to Charlie Rose that there couldn't be a left-liberal answer to Fox News because those people "don't get too worked up about anything." As FAIR noted back then:

When Rose asked if there could ever be a successful progressive version of Fox News Channel, Klein thought not. He explained that while Fox was tapping into a brand of "mostly angry white men" conservatism,

a quote/unquote, "progressive" or liberal network probably couldn't reach the same sort of an audience, because liberals tend to like to sample a lot of opinions. They pride themselves on that. And you know, they don't get too worked up about anything. And they're pretty morally relativistic. And so, you know, they allow for a lot of that stuff.

Now you can argue that MSNBC doesn't really do the same thing as Fox. (Who could, really?) But it's pretty clear that someone in management over there decided--once it was safe to do so--that you could play to the left.  And you know what happened? Most of the time, they wind up getting more prime-time viewers than CNN.

But as Lou has proved again and again, he can't help but resist. On radio the very next day, he slammed Obama for compiling "an enemies' list" (not true), and harrumphed mightily: "I'm moving from being an independent, sir, to being absolutely opposed to your, any policy you could conceive of!" As if he hadn't moved into outright opposition long ago.

So, as soon as Lou had completed all that extra homework--writing 100 times on the blackboard, "I will push opinion aside. I will push opinion aside"--he finally gets to bust out and mix it up with his guests. Only then do the familiar snide comments, appalled facial expressions, and twisted facts spill into a headlong attack on each and every aspect of Obama's healthcare plan--even the aspects resembling those he had just more or less commended in Europe.

That is, Dobbs can read all sorts of fair and balanced words from a script, but he is willfully deaf to their meaning.

"Anything that doesn't fit his worldview," Savan says, "he doesn't hear, it doesn't compute, and he goes blank."

Bauder asks outright: "How does Lou Dobbs keep his job" while plugging the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama "wasn't born in the United States despite convincing evidence to the contrary"?

Dobbs' work has been so unpopular that even Ann Coulter has criticized him.

Dobbs has acknowledged that he believes Obama was born in Hawaii. But he gives airtime to disbelievers, and has said the president should try to put questions fully to rest by releasing a long version of his birth certificate. He's twice done stories on his show after the public leak of a memo from CNN U.S. president Jon Klein saying that "it seems this story is dead."

To be clear, "Klein said those stories were OK because they were about the controversy and weren't actually questioning the facts."

But Bauder reports that "critics suggest Klein is parsing words, that even raising the issue lends it credence"--such criticism even coming from "the Washington Post's Lisa de Moraes: It 'explains their upcoming documentary: "The World: Flat. We Report—You Decide."'"