You’ve probably heard by now, but Lou Dobbs said adios, amigos, to CNN last night!

That’s right—Dobbs quit, as CNN was coming under mounting pressure to fire him. Today, CNN announced that their primetime show, Lou Dobbs Tonight, will be replaced with a new show featuring CNN’s John King, beginning early next year. No word yet on what they’ll broadcast in between.

Now, there are a lot of thoughtful reasons to celebrate, but consider this: waiting for your connection at O’Hare, eating your fifth Cinnabon, and not hearing some old guy ranting about “ILLEGALS GIVING YOU LEPROSY” or how President Obama needs to SHOW US HIS PAPERS to prove that he isn’t an undocumented immigrant from Kenya. Ahhh… how sweet that will be.

Yesterday, CNN President Jonathan Klein said:

Lou has now decided to carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere.

Today, Klein told CNN employees:

John embodies what we are striving for at CNN– he is steadfast in his objective and non-partisan political reporting and has the passion for chasing down stories that really matter to Americans.

That pretty much sums it up. Nice work, CNN.

The extremist fringe has hijacked the national debate on issue after issue because too many national leaders are afraid to stand up for what’s right on issues of race and culture. Glen Beck calls President Obama a racist and Rupert Murdoch agrees, Senators flip-flop on whether to jump on the “birther” bandwagon, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) starts ranting about “illegals” and scares his colleagues into pouring more and more money into bigger and bigger border fence schemes. So for all of us fighting to kick extremism out of the mainstream— on the airwaves and in the halls of Congress— there is more work to do.

But today, it’s time to appreciate this victory, spread the word and give a shout out to the brilliant teams at Basta Dobbs (Presente.org), Media Matters for America and the DropDobbs coalition, the National Council of La Raza, my colleagues here and the hundreds of thousands of others who’ve been key to this grassroots movement to hold CNN accountable.

A recap video from Dave Neiwert at Crooks and Liars:

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