With her recent Nation article, "Lou Dobbs, American Hypocrite," investigative reporter Isabel Macdonald revealed that Dobbs—the former CNN host who made his name and fortune railing against the people he called "illegals"—had in fact relied on their labor for years for the upkeep of his multi-million dollar estates and show horses. The article made waves throughout the media and Dobbs was compelled to defend himself, insisting that because the workers were employed by third-party contractors, he was not technically guilty of hypocrisy. It didn’t help that he had dismissed such excuses by employers as "ridiculous" when he still enjoyed his perch at CNN.

But according to Betsy Reed, The Nation‘s executive editor, all the attention given to Dobbs’s hypocrisy risks obscuring the deeper lesson to learn from this case. "Undocumented workers are so thoroughly woven into the fabric of our economy that even a professional immigrant-basher like Dobbs couldn’t avoid relying on their labor."

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