Episode Thirty-Three: "If Obama Would've Produced That Doggone Birth Certificate, Lou Dobbs Wouldn't Have Been Kidnapped by an Army of Invaders"

RHODA: I heard chants celebrating La Raza, and saw signs that said Lou Dobbs still belongs to Mexico.

MARY: It was an army of invaders, Rhoda.

RHODA: Lou Dobbs calls it the reconquista.

MARY: Lou Dobbs cured 7,000 lepers.

RHODA: Lou Dobbs is worried about his robust bodily form. Lou Dobbs wandered the city on the burning end of a cigarette.

MARY: Lou Dobbs consists of coalesced microspherulites and dark bands with isolated microspherulites.

RHODA: A thick, brown stripe runs down each side of Lou Dobbs's body from his neck to the base of his tail.

MARY: "Is Barack Obama the devil?" Bill O'Reilly asked Lou Dobbs.

RHODA: "If Obama would've produced that doggone birth certificate, he would've shut all this nonsense down," Lou Dobbs said.

MARY: Then maybe Lou Dobbs wouldn't have been kidnapped by an army of invaders.

RHODA: Any excitement that Lou Dobbs still finds in the pursuit of pleasure is fast disintegrating into a panting succession of mechanical gestures.

MARY: The reconquista invaders who kidnapped Lou Dobbs left behind a cosmic force -- the sense of the simultaneous -- which Lou Dobbs's passing presence on CNN never could provide.

RHODA: What remains of such joy, Mary?

MARY: Only vertigo, giddy transience, the effort to provide "illegal aliens" with free medical care, as Lou Dobbs said on October 1, 2003, and to sneak their children into public schools, which he reported the next day.

RHODA: And to look the other way when they commit sex crimes, as Lou Dobbs talked about on October 30, 2003. And to give them special breaks on college tuition, like Lou Dobbs said eight days earlier.

MARY: And to encourage them to clog up the federal prison system, like he reported on November 4, 2003.

RHODA: Sixteen days later, Lou Dobbs said that immigrants were "flooding across our borders carrying dangerous diseases."

MARY: What's the use of threading pearls to make a garland of memories, Rhoda, if the weight of Lou Dobbs snaps the thread?

RHODA: What do I want? Not a succession of moments, but one huge instant. Cable news is the opportunity to go and see what has been banalized.

MARY: Some leaders in media, politics, and business urged Lou Dobbs to go beyond his role at CNN and to engage in constructive problem-solving. Some leaders in media, politics, and business want Lou Dobbs to contribute positively to a better understanding of the great issues of our day.

RHODA: Lou Dobbs's witty and sophisticated friends, subtle drugs, seven-course meals, heady liqueurs, and sultry perfumes occupied the main part of the time that we lived outside of modern production until the reconquista.