Don Lemon Compares Himself to James Baldwin and Malcolm X

You have a track record of upsetting people on the left. What would you say was the worst episode?

I don’t know. No one asks Jake Tapper or Wolf Blitzer to be the spokesperson for any particular group. I’m not an advocate or an activist. I’m a journalist.

The difference, Don, is that Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer do not run around saying things that are actively harmful to vulnerable communities. And the suggestion that he’s held to a wildly different journalistic standard because he’s black is an insult to both black viewers and his own skills as a journalist.

Further, it’s a stretch that we all even agree to call Don Lemon a journalist. Journalists anchoring national news programs aren’t supposed to ask questions on air just because they’re curious. They ask questions to get to the bottom of a truth and that line of questioning should necessarily result in some revelation about a truth. Wondering why women don’t just fight off their rapists is not a fact or insight.

Can you think of a time that you’ve been offended or hurt and then learned from it? Nothing I can think of specifically, no.

It doesn’t seem to me that you get offended very much. I don’t. Instead of being offended or defensive or whatever, I try to be curious about why that person feels that way, why someone has that particular opinion. I understand people being offended and hurt, but as a journalist, I gotta move beyond that. I can’t do that.

Taking pride in never being offended by anything makes him sound like a sociopath. Never getting offended about anything signals a stunt in someone’s intellectual and emotional growth. What I think he means is that he doesn’t get offended over someone simply expressing a conflicting ideology, but that explanation would require some nuance and depth of thought.

What I think he’s doing is trying to conflate being offended over inconsequential slights like a Christ-less Starbucks coffee cup with, say, being offended by comparing a black person using a reclaimed slur amongst themselves to the Confederate flag.

The twisted painful beauty of Don Lemon is just when you think he can’t sink any lower, that he cannot possibly be any more preposterous or more of a parody of himself, he finds a way.

Do you have any idea what you would be doing if you weren’t a journalist? I’d probably be a writer like James Baldwin. Or I would probably be an activist. But not like Dr. King, even though I admire him. I’d probably be more of a Malcolm X. I believe the best way to improve yourself is to improve yourself.

I want us to be very clear on what Don Lemon just did here. The man compared himself to three of the most important black thinkers—nay, three of the most important black people ever.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, arguably the greatest civl rights leader ever, ain’t exactly his cup of tea. Lemon doesn’t seem to have much of a clue about what exactly Malcolm X believed because he sure as shit wasn’t suggesting that respectability politics will keep black people from being discriminated against.

For some reason I find the James Baldwin comparison the most delusional. Fools compare themselves and others Martin Luther King and Malcolm X all the time largely because they are default examples of activists. But James Baldwin? One of the greatest people to write words in the history of humans writing down words? Nah.

I never knew James Baldwin, but I have read his work and I possess common sense. For those reasons, I feel comfortable saying that no, Don Lemon, you couldn’t even hope to possibly one day dream of briefly embodying a glimpse of talent that would justify even a passing James Baldwin comparison. And if he were alive today, the man himself would probably run as far away from you as possible. Lord knows that those of us still alive are trying to.

Image via Charley Gallay/Getty.