CNN is more of a circus than a proper news network. As viewers vanish, each of its personalities desperately plays a performative role to attract headlines and clicks. Don Lemon — ever the victim, yet always intentionally divisive — is no different.
Lemon recently told the Washington Post, “I don’t know if America sees black people, and especially black gay men, as fully human and as deserving of the American dream.”
Lemon argued black and white Americans are “living in two different realities.”
This is the role Lemon plays on CNN. In one moment, he is the woebegone victim of systemic racism, a man who encapsulates all the fears of “white, conservative America.” In the next, he uses his program to divide the country while laughing it up with silver-spoon loudmouth Chris Cuomo.
Half of Lemon’s persona is mocking the “rubes”: the less privileged, ordinary people at whom he looks down his nose. He did this alongside fellow elitist guests from the New York Times and the Lincoln Project on CNN’s airwaves last year. In the end, he was sufficiently ashamed of his own behavior to issue a non-apology in which he insisted he doesn’t “believe in belittling people.” But really, the video speaks for itself.
The arrogance, the dismissiveness, the smug cackling, the accents.
If Donald Trump wins re-election this year, I’ll remember this brief CNN segment late one Saturday night in January as the perfect encapsulation for why it happened. pic.twitter.com/8kQ6zN9AZV
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) January 28, 2020
Most recently, Lemon falsely accused parents of trying to keep slavery out of school curricula just because they don’t want their children to be taught the toxic lies they are inherently racist or else hopeless victims. Lemon, a wealthy elitist, used his prime-time show to team up with the son of the former governor of New York to mock parents and lecture them over their “privilege” of all things.
Whether he’s mocking parents for not wanting racialism taught to their children, mocking Trump voters as idiots, or screaming to help spread racist tropes about GOP Sen. Tim Scott, Lemon is one of the most intentionally divisive figures in media. Yet, take him on his own account, and he is the true victim of society, the man who symbolizes everything the made-up America in his head hates.
It is a “burden” for Lemon to talk about racism from his cushy CNN studio. And unfortunately (or conveniently) for him, all of his political opponents are obviously racists. They are so dumb, he will mock them on his cable show and pretend he didn’t mean it. They don’t live in reality, and he can’t be friends with them anymore.
Each CNN personality has his own role. Jake Tapper pretends to be CNN’s straight newsman. Brian Stelter campaigns to de-platform his much more successful competitors. Chris Cuomo periodically makes a fool of himself with extravagant stunts and righteous ignorance. Don Lemon, meanwhile, is the cry-bully — the pretend victim who plays his pendulum act on broadcasts and in interviews.
Cuomo’s antics are probably the best example of CNN’s performative “journalism.” But it’s Lemon’s simultaneous victimhood act and contemptuous mockery that show what the network really thinks about half of the country. A rating implosion couldn’t possibly befall a group of nicer people.
