He chooses spectacularly wrongheaded comparisons to make straw man arguments
After Barack Obama appeared on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast earlier in the week and said the N-word, Don decided this was exactly like that Confederate flag brouhaha down in Charleston. In a move that could have come straight out of satirical news show Brass Eye, Lemon appeared on CNN that night and asked the real question: what’s more offensive, America? A president using an offensive term to make a pertinent point about racism or a flag that (for some) represents slavery, bigotry and years of oppression? Was it a crass argument that did nothing to move the debate on or a man taking a risk in order to reveal the truth? We think you know.
CNN went full Brasseye today. pic.twitter.com/fGub1V72RT
— Christian Bennett (@christianobeno) June 23, 2015
Others took it with more humour.
C’mon, Don Lemon, you have to at least give a spoiler alert. pic.twitter.com/mzmkC41nPW
— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) June 23, 2015
When he gets something wrong he’s unable to admit it
Do you know how to pronounce the word sorbet? It’s sore-bay, right? Wrong. Lemon knows it’s actually pronounced sor-bette (as in: Sore Betty, the non-existent reboot of Ugly Betty). No one else in the world knows that because we’re not on his level. This and other examples of Don’s incredibly bumptious approach to life and desserts were laid out in a profile in GQ. His ethos is simple: we need to stop being sheeple and just start to believe in ourselves, our guts and our inner voices, regardless of how completely wrong they are.
This is one of Don’s fatal flaws. He never takes a backwards step. Even when his ability to completely misjudge a situation means he’s heckled by bystanders during 80% of his broadcasts (that’s not an accurate number, but I just went with my gut) and landed him the inauspicious title of Fuccboi of the year 2014 from Complex magazine. Not sure if he’ll put that one next to his Emmy.
He’s got the bedside manner of a cactus
You know when you meet someone at a party but can’t really be bothered to interact with them in a polite way? That’s Don’s approach to his guests. When CNN sent him to Ferguson to cover the aftermath of the Darren Wilson non-indictment and subsequent protests, he managed to alienate not only the local community but his guest: rapper and activist Talib Kweli.
Instead of an informed, passionate debate about what was going on in the town and why Kweli was there, it turned into an onscreen face-off as Kweli called out Lemon for not even bothering to learn his name or acknowledge him before the cameras began rolling. Did Don back down, cool the situation and apologise for his faux pas? Forget about it. Don has never been wrong ever, remember?! He knows how to say sorbette. He had it out with the rapper, telling him he didn’t have time for niceties because he was “working”.
Remember: you don’t need facts or tact, just questions
To be fair to Lemon, his job as an anchor and reporter is to ask awkward questions, and regardless of the topic or interviewee he’ll do it. Nothing is off the table. Remember the time he asked Islamic Monthly editor Arsalan Iftikhar whether he supported Isis after he invited him on to talk about the Charlie Hebdo shootings? Or the time he asked an alleged victim of rape at the hands of Bill Cosby why she didn’t use her teeth to stop him? Or the time he suggested a black hole might be responsible for the disappearance of flight MH370? Or the time he said black people were responsible for Justin Bieber using the N-word? Or the time he didn’t know the difference between a semi-automatic and an automatic weapon? Or the time he … you get it.
