Vermination Update

The Extremely Data-Resistant Lou Dobbs (XDR-LD) obviously picked the wrong dreaded disease in the Vermination Sweepstakes. Instead of tuberculosis,* he went with leprosy and then botched it badly. Here's Dean Starkman's wry summation from his CJR "The Audit" column:

But listen, I don’t want to make too much of this. There was no real harm done in the end, even to immigrant lepers. How many of them have cable? And using lepers to attack illegal immigrants is so grotesque, so fifteenth-century Romania, that, one must admit, it’s pretty comical. It’s like beating Little Orphan Annie with Oliver Twist. Stop it! You're killing me!

Still, this is about a respect for facts. Admit error and move on. Instead, as a lead-in to the Great Fact Debate of May 16, we get another report about leprosy, this one with the correct figures.

Here's Dobbs's introduction: “The number of leprosy cases in this country is rising and that isn't the worst of it…”

*Of course, it should be noted that for Dobbs's purposes, the current XDR-TB story has severe drawbacks. While it has the cool "X" up front (like X Files and X Sports and X-termination), it unfortunately involves a native born, upper-middle-class white American male. It just doesn't come anywhere near to fitting the preferred paradigm.