Leper-Liar Lou Lambasted

New York Times economics and business columnist David Leonhardt applied a long-overdue MSM smackdown to populist ogre Lou Dobbs and his "somewhat flexible relationship with reality" in yesterday's paper.

No need to excerpt from the piece. Just go read the damn thing. It is, however, worth cribbing from Dobbs's lame reply.

Today, The New York Times published a column that picks up where an advertisement -- a paid advertisement in The Times, paid for by the Southern Poverty Law Center -- left off two weeks ago.

Today's New York Times column is primarily a personal attack on me, focuses on an ad-lib on the set of this broadcast uttered more than two years ago by Christine Romans on a number of cases of leprosy in this country. An unscripted ad-lib, not a report by the way -- we've never done a report on leprosy until we had to set this record straight a couple of weeks ago. That's over four and a half years of reporting on that issue.

The second issue, accusing us of overstating the number of non-citizens in our federal prisons. That number reported on this broadcast three-and-a-half years ago.

Now, no one hates making a mistake, I assure you, more than I do. And on this broadcast, we do make mistakes -- not often, mind you -- but certainly enough to frustrate me mightily, and with barely tolerable frequency.

Is that contrition? Not really, but it's a far cry from Dobbs's dunderheaded bombast on 60 Minutes or his insistent repetition of bad data on his own show.

Dobbs smackdown -- well he sagely predicted attacks on him "perhaps may get even a little more energetic", didn't he? -- here, here, here, here, here, and here. Times reader responses here.