Lou Dobbs is sitting seductively on your desk. Don’t look. I’m just kidding. In fact, Dobbs’s best days are likely well behind him and his powers of seduction probably lie somewhere between those of Napoleon “I like your shoulders” Dynamite and Conan O’Brien.

But Lou Dobbs’ sex-appeal aside, the new CNN ad campaign, featuring Mr. Dobbs himself, is just plain bizarre. The television segments, which have already been torn apart by Slate’s Ad Report Card, are plenty creepy, not to mention ineffective. But it’s CNN’s internet banner ad, as prominently displayed on its own website, that really leaves me in a state of befuddlement comparable only to the time I saw that cigarette-smoking chimpanzee on the nightly news.

The banner ad features two web-savvy CNN viewers seated in front of a computer screen. The ad (it’s one of those fancy banners where dialog pops up at different time intervals) begins as the male character pompously declares, “Well, I happen to have a degree in political science.” The woman, seated alongside a sheepishly grinning Mr. Dobbs, sharply retorts, “Well, I happen to have Lou Dobbs.” Nana nana boo boo.

Besides being utterly infantile, this ad simply makes no sense. Lou Dobbs is equivalent to a degree in political science? Lou Dobbs will come to your home/office if you’re bickering with a spouse/co-worker? Lou Dobbs holds the powers of a mystical shaman? WHAAAT?

Equally baffling is the association of Dobbs with CNN.com. According to CNN, its newest ad campaign focuses on its website, not the brand as a whole. CNN execs admit this connection can be sometimes confusing and don’t mind some spillover. But in the spirit of this web-centered ad, I quickly browsed the CNN website, and the only mention of Dobbs I could find was yet another banner ad inviting me to enter “Lou’s World,” a site run in conjunction with Dobbs’ that is all Lou all the time. Thanks but no thanks, bud.

These new ads are part of CNN’s new strategy to spice up its image. First there was the steely-eyed cool of Anderson Cooper starring in ads in which he incessantly repeats the first line of a story intro at the command of a distracted office worker. Now there’s the personality cult of Lou Dobbs. CNN has decided that its biggest assets are its anchors and that we, the viewers, should no longer put our trust only in CNN’s reputation for objective, no-frills news coverage but also in the anchors themselves. Granted, it’s a few logical leaps from “He’s even better than a degree in political science” to “Lou Dobbs is an omniscient demi-god,” but I think the implication comes through, despite the tedious muddle of CNN’s ad campaign.

One thing that isn’t muddled though is Dobbs’ nightly message of economic doom and illegal alien invasion. Dobbs has long been a major proponent of protectionism and strict immigration control. He’s recently gone so far as to support the actions of non-law enforcement vigilantes hunting down would-be Mexican immigrants trying to cross the border. But while Dobbs’ positions are nothing new, the typically sedate Dobbs has become somewhat of a flamethrower of late. Debate has always been a part of Lou Dobbs Tonight, CNN’s nightly business-themed program. But as of late, Dobbs’ rhetorical techniques have been a little less Tim Russert and a lot more Bill O’Reilly. Each episode features O’Reilly-esque “Lou’s commentary” in which Dobb’s goes on a bitter rant against the two great evils of “Lou’s World” – you guessed it – outsourcing and immigration.

Take this excerpt from a show that aired on April 1, 2005:

Illegal immigration depresses wages, leads to job losses and drains the U.S. economy of public funds for social services and education, but there is also the larger problem of protecting our country from another deadly terrorist attack.

In style worthy only of O’Reilly’s “no spin zone”, Dobbs attributes nearly every major ailment facing America today – from terrorism, to unemployment, to the budget deficit - to illegal immigration, sans any supporting evidence. In “Lou’s World,” Lou Dobbs is better than a political science degree, so we should just take his broad assertions as truth and ignore pesky restraints such as “facts.”

And this is just one half of the two-front war Dobbs fights nightly. If illegal immigration is the southern front, Dobbs is also digging trenches to the east, across the Pacific, where he must combat the evils of job-draining outsourcing. CNN plays up Dobbs’ anti-outsourcing antics in its ad entitled, you guessed it, “Lou.” “Lou” begins as Dobbs explains to a ditsy blonde companion that “Four more U.S. multinationals have been discovered to be outsourcing American jobs to…” then silence. The camera pans from an evidently aggravated Dobbs to a smirking Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s medical expert, and then back to Dobb’s, who scours suspiciously upon the boyishly charming Indian physician.

The implications of this 15-second clip are deep; it feels more like a political issue ad than a commercial for cable news. India is obviously the culprit in this scenario as are its cohorts, the “U.S. multinationals” that “have been discovered to be outsourcing American jobs.” The logic of this statement is incredibly flawed. First comes the insinuation that outsourcing is some hush-hush criminal act on par with stealing quarters from the collection plate at church, something that Lou Dobbs himself has “discovered” through the amazing powers of investigative journalism. But the fact that major international corporations are doing business in India is no shocker nor is it illegal. Second is the assumption that India, and solely India, is somehow taking “American” jobs. This is pure rubbish. I won’t get into the economics, but if you weren’t calling Bangalore the next time your computer crashes, you’d probably be calling Manila.

CNN has been lagging in the ratings game for some time now and its new ad campaign isn’t doing much to stop the bleeding. Lou Dobbs might be borrowing heartily from prime-time kingpin Bill O’Reilly, but for a network trying to remake its image into something a little more 21st century, the politics of 1930s isolationism won’t do the trick. But at least Dobb’s is a man of consistency. In “Lou’s World,” the politics are just as inane as the ads selling them.