Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Don Lemon Logic ~ Shoe Shines, Litterbugs and Belts

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CNN's Don Lemon Blames the Black Community for Trayvon Martin Racism

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CNN Transcripts Saturday July 27, 2013
DON LEMON: Michael Skolnik, I talked in that segment about the so-called thug culture that the hip-hop and rap community promotes, and you are a -- you are a proponent for hip-hop and rap. You don't believe that we should stop saying the n-word.

MICHAEL SKOLNIK, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GLOBALGRIND.COM: Don, I think your comments sounded like a conservative preacher on a Sunday and certainly Bill O'Reilly should welcome you on his show. I'm disappointed in you --

LEMON: Yes, but -- go ahead, I'll let you finish.

SKOLNIK: Here's the thing. You are talking about sagging pants. I've heard the rap for years. Let's not talk about sagging pants and let us talk about why we incarcerate 2.2 million people in this country and why young kids look up to guys who come out of jail. We waged a war against black and brown people 40 years ago, the war on drugs and it failed miserably and now we are reaping the repercussions.

LEMON: But Michael, -- Michael --

SKOLNIK: Yes.

LEMON: Not every black kid is in jail and there are rules and people should know where that style comes from whether it's a black kid or a white kid whether it's Justin Bieber or any -- that is glorifying prison culture. Who wants to see someone's butt crack?

SKOLNIK: No. The community has been destroyed. Black men went to jail as diseased drug addicts and they came out as criminals because they taught them criminal behavior in prison. We destroyed the black community.

LEMON: Then why do you have to glorify that through rap and hip hop culture?

SKOLNIK: It's not glorifying it, it's a reflection of our society. Our society incarcerates 2.2 million people more than anyone else in the world. It's a reflection, it's a mirror. Don't break the mirror. Look at yourself.

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I have likened privilege to an intoxicant, one that will have you tripping so hard that you will think you don’t have it. Privilege, I have said, is one “helluva” drug. Inhale enough and you will start believing that you are among the oppressed. At its essence, however, privilege is simply the liberty not to know. I watched in horror this week as a colleague suffered a “contact high”.
A swift kick to the backside, or “tough love” as CNN anchor Don Lemon calls it, will not tear down the strictures of race, class and gender in this country. To say so gives rise to the aspersion that distressed communities are simply the manifestation of a collective moral failing.
. . . Despite his self-professed humble upbringing, Lemon betrayed a nascent understanding of the societal and political pathologies that left generations of devastation in their wake.
~ Goldie Taylor on The Grio

Whether you know it or not Don, when you jump on O’Reilly’s racist bandwagon, you come across as a clueless sock puppet…a sell-out, who has lost touch not only with the black community, but with your own soul, as well.
When you raised those five points you broad-brushed the entirety of my community just like O’Reilly does with his “fire-ready-aim” approach to ranting about how terrible and deserving of scorn black people are.
~ Kwik on Daily Kos

Don Lemon is a friend of mine, but on then score I think that Mr. Lemon has missed the boat. The reality is we can’t blame the victims. We can’t blame people who are victimized by a vicious attitude that profiles them.
Bill O’Reilly has advanced no profound commitment to or sympathy for African-American people. He’s constantly lecturing us from his bastardized podium where he condescendingly throws out nuggets of wisdom to us without understanding the existential and moral crisis that attend the kind of victimization of black people.
Are we going to say white culture is pathologized because it refuses to take care of its children? Its kids are going to hell in a hand basket because they are on meth and they don’t care about the fundamental structure of the family?
We can indict the white family. There’s a lot of negativity, there’s a lot of dismissiveness, there’s a lot of crass materialism that refuses to care for the other.
~ Michael Eric Dyson on MSNBC's Martin Bashir











































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