Making lemonade out of Don Lemon
Complex has awarded the CNN anchor the honor of Fuccboi of the Year for 2014. Surely, you concur
- TWITTER: @MATTHEWACHERRY
- SIDE-EYE: Don Lemon’s questionable commentary raised plenty of eyebrows in 2014.
Since turning discarded hog innards into a Southern delicacy known as chitterlings back in slavery, black America has long excelled at honing treasure from scraps. So it’s only right in 2014 that we make lemonade out of Don Lemon.
Last week, Complex awarded the CNN anchor “Fuccboi of the Year” in an essay written by Julian Kimble. The hard-earned critique came as a result of Lemon’s special propensity for being condescending and patronizing while misconstruing controversial topics surrounding race in the service of ratings. He represents what many have come to hate most about mainstream media. In times that cry out for pointed, insightful critique, the loudest voices tend to pass off their broad-stroked biases as hard fact. It’s hard to tell if Lemon does so out of pure ignorance or in an attempt to curry favor as the contrary Negro. When he’s not busy mischaracterizing Ferguson protestors in CNN coverage, he’s arguing down other prominent voices — such as interviewee Talib Kweli or his CNN colleague Van Jones — for challenging him. And his foul balls seemingly know no bounds. An equal opportunity offender, Lemon’s loose lips questioned the defense tactics of an alleged Bill Cosby rape victim because she failed to bite off the Cos’s pudding pop during an alleged round of oral sodomy.
His worst offense in summary? Playing devil’s advocate more than the devil himself. The fourth graph of Kimble’s essay gets to the crux of it:
Lemon loves to wag a condescending finger at the black community, using his platform to publicly chide African-Americans in absurd fashion. What’s worse is that his “respectability politics” regarding what black people need to do to better themselves have resulted in uninformed whites either saying to themselves, “See, one of them is even saying it,” or hanging on to every word because the talking black head on the television is the only black person they know. Or both. Even if there’s truth in Lemon’s words, his method of communication validates the beliefs of those who insist Eric Garner and Michael Brown caused their own deaths.
Back in August, Tracy Clayton of Buzzfeed posted this hilarious send-up of tongue-in-cheek tweets hypothesizing why black folk were throwing the Lemon major shade. It was funny. It’s also where the meme at the top of this post comes from.
By choosing to title the award “Fuccboi of the Year,” Complex seems to suggest that Lemon is more petty annoyance than serious threat. But Lemon is more than a laughing matter. At a time when networks don’t mind offending a target demographic as long as the hate-watchers continue to send ratings through the roof, it’s hard to know how to respond to his offenses. Maybe he deserves our empathy. The pressure Lemon must face in that position has to be unbearable. (See Wyatt Williams’ 2011 CL profile of Lemon for more on that.) What’s sadder is the likelihood that he’s being used to help CNN appear diverse in an era when many of it’s commentators of color have received the boot. Whatever imaginary race quota CNN thinks it’s filling has been voided by the Clarence Thomas of Cable News and the color of his consciousness. If only the cable news network gave a fucc.