Don Lemon Non-Apologizes for Thickheaded Rape Comments

Don Lemon has responded to the deeply ignorant comments about rape that he made last night on his CNN show. His solution to the controversy is a non-apology that is almost as stupid as his original question of, hey girl, why didn’t you just bite down on Bill Cosby’s penis so you could prevent yourself from being raped? Huh? Didya ever think of that?

Lemon begins by noting that he himself is a victim of sexual violence—he was molested as a child—presumably meaning to point out that he would never want to diminish a victim’s pain or blame them in any way for the crimes committed against them. Yeah, dude. Duh. The acknowledgment of your own trauma suggests that you really should have known better than blame a rape victim for their own rape.

Lemon backtracks and pulls the most cowardly of coward moves by pulling out the old “sorry if you were offended” bullshit: “If my question struck anyone as insensitive, I’m sorry as that was not my intention.”

Great. Thanks, Don. I’m sure your words are sound, sound comfort to all the victims of sexual violence that you offended.

I’m just throwing this out there, but a better response might have been: I’m deeply sorry for suggesting that Joan Tarshis was at all responsible for preventing her sexual assault. I was wrong, I regret what I said and I’m now going to go take some time to figure out why I can’t stop saying stupid shit on live television.