Don Lemon

CNN's Don Lemon said last year that he hoped to "change minds" when he declared that he was gay. And on Sunday evening he showed exactly where he lies on same-sex marriage and in no small words challenged the fundamental beliefs of its opponents, comparing them to those who opposed interracial marriage and integration.

He later compared Mitt Romney to segregationist Governor George Wallace, but during the 6 p.m. hour Lemon hosted activist Rev. Joseph Lowery – who also gave the benediction at President Obama's inauguration – and both of them criticized opponents of same-sex marriage. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Don Lemon Sunday evening compared Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to former Alabama governor George Wallace.

At the beginning of a CNN Newsroom segment he calls "No Talking Points," Lemon played a clip of Wallace saying in 1963, "I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever" followed by Romney saying Saturday, "Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

An openly gay adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney resigned last week, and the Obama-loving media interested in discussing anything but the poor economy jumped all over it.

NewsBusters associate editor Noel Sheppard discussed this with Don Lemon on CNN Newsroom Saturday (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN host Don Lemon cracked up over a raunchy joke about Michele Bachmann's husband, on Sunday night's 6 p.m. edition of Newsroom. Conservative guest Will Cain then confronted the openly-gay anchor over why it was okay to make fun of Bachmann appearing to be gay.

"If, as the joke suggests Marcus Bachmann is gay, but he hasn't come to grips with himself. Now, I'm asking two guys who've been through this process, honestly, I'm honestly curious, why is it okay to make fun of him then?" Cain inquired. Lemon "came out" about his orientation a year ago and expressed his wishes that prejudices about homosexuality would be overcome. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Don Lemon committed heresy on Sunday night.

In his "No Talking Points" segment on CNN Newsroom, he had the unmitigated audacity to challenge Barack Obama while agreeing with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Over the last few decades, the liberal media have celebrated Earth Day and used it to spread the gospel of green liberalism. CNN's Sunday reporting was no exception as the network touted public figures headlining an Earth Day rally in Washington, D.C., like the city's Democratic Mayor Vincent Gray and the rock band Cheap Trick.

However, for the March for Life rally in January that was attended by at least tens of thousands of pro-lifers, CNN gave it two brief mentions on-air. In contrast, while reportedly only hundreds showed up to celebrate Earth Day on the National Mall, CNN touted it as a "big rally" and covered it in-depth on Sunday afternoon, telling its viewers "we want you to know all about this." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

As NewsBusters previously reported, CNN's Don Lemon two Saturdays ago advocated journalists actually say the N-word in news reports rather than the more politically correct, sanitized version we've grown accustomed to in recent years.

On Sunday, I chatted with Lemon about this issue - along with Big Journalism's Dana Loesch - on CNN Newsroom (video follows with transcript and lengthy commentary):

Oh the delicious irony.

On ABC's The View Tuesday, as co-host Whoopi Goldberg supported Saturday's call by CNN's Don Lemon for reporters to say the N-word when quoting folks that have, the censors actually bleeped her when she said the word herself (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported earlier, CNN national correspondent Susan Candiotti said "f--king n--ger" on the air Easter Sunday.

Less than 24 hours earlier, CNN's Don Lemon advocated "n--ger" be used during news reports rather than the more politically correct "N-word" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

If you were wondering about CNN's objectivity on liberal issues like gay rights, the lines became a whole lot more blurred recently as anchor Don Lemon received a "Visibility" award from the pro-gay Human Rights Campaign at its North Carolina gala, where Obama's HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius spoke and stumped for the President's re-election.

Then on Friday, Sebelius addressed middle school students at an anti-bullying event where Lemon served as the moderator of an anti-bullying panel. His appearances at events with an Obama cabinet member blur the lines of objectivity and his receiving an award from a gay-rights organization makes his liberal bias all the clearer.

CNN's Don Lemon launched a heavy defense of President Obama's apology for the Koran burnings in Afghanistan, in lieu of criticism Obama has received from GOP presidential candidates. In his Sunday night segment entitled "No Talking Points," Lemon ironically threw Democratic talking points at the Republicans.

Lemon claimed neutrality over Obama's apology before offering all the reasons why it is not the scandal Republicans are claiming it to be. Lemon quoted Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Reagan apologizing for the slave trade, the Abu Gharib prison scandal, and the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

CNN's Don Lemon on Sunday asked viewers, "Why are there so many more examples of gay conservative closet cases?"

In a segment about homosexual scandals in the Republican Party, Lemon answered his own question saying, "Perhaps the GOP’s own repressive platform is the very thing that forces gay members to live a lie" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

In his Thursday interview of the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, CNN host Don Lemon questioned Perkins if his group had come out strongly enough against the beating of a homosexual man in Atlanta.

The conservative organization opposes the lifestyle of homosexuality, and Lemon is an openly-gay anchor who has said before that he aims to "change minds" through his reporting. Lemon has continually promoted gay rights on the air while largely ignoring those supporting the other side of the issue. [Video below the break.]

CNN's Don Lemon attacked the "classic GOP move" of claiming liberal media bias, on Sunday's 10 p.m. edition of Newsroom. The liberal CNN host lampooned Sarah Palin's "lamestream" media line and – rather sloppily – faulted the GOP candidates for their own travails.

"Long story short – maybe it's time for politicians who get caught in unflattering situations or who might have a bit of trouble with the truth to take responsibility for their own actions and stop blaming the media," lectured Lemon, who as a member of the liberal media didn't exactly "take responsibility" in deflecting blame back at the GOP and Fox News without refuting their claims of liberal media bias. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

CNN's T.J. Holmes, reporting Tuesday on the eviction of "Occupy Los Angeles" and the subsequent arrests of 200 protesters, simply numbered the arrests as totaling in the "dozens." Apparently for CNN, over 16 dozen arrests still merits the count of "dozens" rather than "scores" or even "hundreds" or simply "200."

CNN held sympathy for "Occupy L.A." in more ways than one. During the 12 p.m. hour, Holmes asked a city police commander if some of his colleagues sympathized with the protest or even had wanted to join the "occupiers" before they had to evict them. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

If you needed any more evidence of the political leaning of CNN, consider that much like Politico, it has in the last six days done at least 94 reports on the sexual harassment allegations involving Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.

Substantially more shocking, according to LexisNexis, the supposedly most trusted name in news only did 77 total stories on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's ties to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, convicted real estate developer Tony Rezko, and America-hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

CNN's Don Lemon hosted radical leftist and former Communist Party member Angela Davis on Sunday night's Newsroom for what he called a "blast from the past." Davis hit President Obama from the left and praised the Wall Street protests as a continuation of the movement that swept "a black president who identified with a black radical tradition" into office.

CNN labeled Davis as a "political activist" but did not report that she was a prominent Communist Party member and twice its vice presidential candidate in the 1980s. As a professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz, she was urged by the state's then-Governor Ronald Reagan not to be allowed to teach at the state's universities because of her Communist Party membership. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

CNN released a poll last month where 61 percent of Republican respondents believed abortion should be legal in "certain" cases and 11 percent believed it should be always legal, while only 27 percent opposed its legalization in all cases. Don Lemon cited this poll and touted that an overwhelming number of Republicans now support the legalization of abortion "under all or certain circumstances."

"So Will, 72 percent, 72 percent of voting Republicans think abortion should be legal under all or certain circumstances," Lemon emphasized to conservative guest Will Cain of TheBlaze.com. "So how does such a minority of Republicans come to play such an influential role in choosing the GOP nominee?" [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

To discuss presidential candidate Herman Cain's views on race and racism, CNN's Don Lemon aired the opinions of two African-American liberals, in addition to analysis from conservative blogger Erick Erickson.

Lemon, himself an African-American anchor who has shown his own liberal bias in the past, hosted leftist LZ Granderson of ESPN and played a clip of Democratic strategist Cornell Belcher slamming Cain as a racist at the end of CNN's 12 p.m. hour of Newsroom. [Video below the break.]

In an interview with a gay Chicago newspaper, CNN's openly-gay African-American anchor Don Lemon warned that the same Bible that was used to "keep us as slaves" is now a weapon against gay people.

"We have, in many ways, been a victim of the Scriptures and theology that have been used to keep us as slaves," Lemon claimed, talking about the African-American culture. "It's been ingrained us (sic), and now we use it against gay people without thinking about things objectively."

CNN on Sunday doubled down on the Washington Post-made controversy "Niggerhead" involving Rick Perry by doing a second "CNN Newsroom" segment on the subject this time using the issue to attack Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain as well.

Putting a fine point on the absurdity on display, host Don Lemon concluded the piece with a discussion about how "it's difficult to criticize a black president" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The folks at the Washington Post got exactly what they wanted with Sunday’s racially charged, 3000-word, front page hit piece about Texas governor Rick Perry.

CNN did two segments on N-ggerhead Sunday evening, one with host Don Lemon asking his guests, “Can a candidate recover once they've been associated with a controversy over the word n-gger?” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In a Thursday NPR interview, CNN's openly-gay anchor Don Lemon lumped discrimination against gays and lesbians in with atrocities committed in Libya.

When asked why audiences should be interested in gay and lesbian issues, Lemon answered that "people are glued to what's happening in Libya, because it affects us. Any atrocity that's committed against one person affects us all and we are becoming more of one society, of a global society. "

In the days leading up to Hurricane Irene's march through the Northeast,  journalists repeatedly suggested that the storm was yet more evidence of climate change.

"The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?" asked the New York Times' Justin Gillis in his August 28 piece.

HLN guest host Don Lemon asked scientist Bill Nye on Wednesday if the storm was proof of climate change. Nye answered that it was "consistent with all the predictions of climate change models" and added that the United States is behind the times in taking action on climate change. "There's no other developed world country that isn't very concerned about climate change," Nye asserted, and ABC's weatherman Sam Champion agreed.

[Video below the break.]

The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association held their annual convention this weekend in Philadelphia, and the keynote speakers were CNN's Don Lemon and NBC's Ann Curry. Their pictures were featured under the motto "Creating a Revolution." The group says it's "working from within the news industry to foster fair and accurate coverage of LGBT issues." (That often means censoring conservative views, not just correcting errors.) Comcast, the majority owner of NBC Universal, is a top financial backer of the convention.

The plan was for Curry to be interviewed by Javier Morgado on "How does she see network news evolving?" And "does she believe in the ‘greater good’ of the work that journalists do?" Morgado, a gay activist, spent 11 years at NBC, including five years as Senior Producer at the Today show, and he managed the network's political coverage for the 2004 presidential election and the 2006 midterm elections as Senior Political Editor.

Substitute hosting on HLN's The Joy Behar Show, on Tuesday, CNN's Don Lemon prodded Jay Bakker, the son of televangelist Jim Bakker, to accuse Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann of exploiting fears of Christians as he claimed that the GOP presidential hopefuls were: "playing to a group of people who deal a lot with fear and using fear to control folks."

The dismissive Bakker then asserted: "I feel like they've kind of hijacked Christianity," and added that he thinks the Perrys and Bachmanns were advancing "fairy tales" that global warming doesn't exist and claimed they wanted to "ignore" science.

(video after the jump)

Live from the Iowa State Fair, CNN's Don Lemon asked Republican presidential nominee Herman Cain if he could win the Iowa vote for the Republican nomination and for president, given that Cain belongs to a "mostly-white party" and is campaigning in a "mostly-white state."

Lemon had said the two had a "passionate conversation" prior to going on air, where he asked Cain "do you think in a party – in a mostly-white party in a mostly-white state, did you really stand a chance, not only of a nomination, of becoming President?"

[Video below the break.]

CNN's Don Lemon asked a guest Sunday if President Obama is "more conservative" than most would believe. Lemon referred back to his question last week, which NewsBusters reported, when he asked a Democrat congressman if Obama would do better running as a conservative in 2012.

The CNN anchor claimed he was being facetious then, but jovially added "Someone took that seriously." Then, quoting a columnist who argues Obama is a closet moderate-conservative, he posed the question to guest Heather McGhee from Demos.org: "Is Obama more conservative than most people think?"

[Video below the break.]

Both House Democrats and Republicans opposed the debt ceiling compromise, but CNN's Don Lemon gave softball interviews to three Democrat congressmen who voted against the bill, while scrutinizing Tea Party Congressman Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) for his opposition.

"Why the change of heart, Congressman?" the CNN host asked Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) Tuesday on his decision to switch his vote to no. Lemon let him explain his vote and even asked if Frank's colleagues had read the bill before supporting it. "She [Pelosi] came out and supported it. But do you think your colleagues actually read the bill?" he asked Frank.