O'Reilly to Dobbs: Is Obama the Devil?

Despite his departure from CNN Lou Dobbs still has plenty to say about everything and anything. He debated with Bill O'Reilly on whether President Barack Obama is "the devil."

Throughout the interview both O'Reilly and Dobbs were relatively restrained. Dobbs did not appear to be carrying a hatchet for CNN and agreed that he had seen it coming with CNN's move away from advocacy journalism. He accepted the network's change in direction but admitted that it was something he could not do personally. He also signaled his intention to remain in the public eye as either a pundit or a politician. It was only in the last two minutes of the interview that things got weird. (See video above). O'Reilly asked Dobbs if Obama is the devil. Interestingly Dobbs response was remarkably even handed. He assured O'Reilly that Obama was not the devil, while acknowledging that he opposed many of Obama's policies and found many of his decisions incomprehensible. The absurdity of the entire debate was best captured by Guardian blogger Michael Tomasky who proposed the next topic for O'Reilly and Dobbs to debate: "Who's worse, Obama or Manson? Remember, the latter only killed a couple dozen people or so, and his scheme for black people to take over the world never got out of the drafting stage. So it may be a closer call than you'd think." On the other hand Atlantic.com took a more measured stance. It compared Dobb's latest media kerfuffle to Sarah Palin's book promotion interviews and concluded that Dobbs is the 'anti-Palin,' her doppelganger:

She was retrospective, backbiting, and virtually silent about the trouble millions face during the worst economy in a lifetime.... Dobbs did not complain about the way he was treated by CNN, saying it didn't force him out and its executives treated him well. He barely griped about his usual targets: immigration groups and The New York Times. Dobbs even said he was partially to blame for CNN's low ratings; Palin said she wasn't why McCain lost the election.

The most interesting comment in the Atlantic.com piece was its conclusion. "Maybe the talk show host [Dobbs] should trade jobs with the politician [Palin]."