As NewsBusters has been reporting, CNN’s Don Lemon has taken a lot of heat from the left for having the nerve to agree with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly about problems in the black community.
On Fox News’s Happening Now Monday, liberal talk radio host Alan Colmes marvelously stated, “We’ll have true equality in this country when someone like Don Lemon or any other person of color can make a statement that doesn't conform with what the so-called majority believes without being called names, without being called an Uncle Tom” (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JIM PINKERTON, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE: Well I think the challenge here is that when somebody tries to speak honestly about these issues in the full range of the issues they get booted off the stage. I think we’re seeing that happening to CNN’s Don Lemon right now, the anchor who a few days ago said that, “Look, if you really want to help my fellow African-Americans” – this is him talking now – “we’ve got to dress better, behave better, you know, commit fewer crimes, and have fewer children out of wedlock.”
It was an extremely honest statement that basically recapitulated for example what Juan Williams would say on this air, or what Martin Luther King was saying 50 years ago, or what Booker T. Washington was saying a hundred years ago, that is if you want to make it in America - Jackie Robinson would be another one – you’ve got to live by certain standards and behave yourself. And Lemon is being clobbered in the Twittersphere by the likes of Goldie Taylor at MSNBC. I would hope he has the courage that Juan Williams has had to keep it up. But let’s have a full and fair debate about that, too.
ALAN COLMES: I think it’s good that Don Lemon’s talking out. I object when Don Lemon gets called an Uncle Tom simply for having a different point of view than people think he’s supposed to have. And I think it’s courageous of him to do it, just like Bill O'Reilly on our air speaks out about it and says some things that may be uncomfortable, but it’s important we have this dialogue and that is what’s healthy about this conversation.
JON SCOTT, HOST: Obviously, O’Reilly said that one of the problems that has happened to blacks in America, one of the tremendous problems in his view that is facing them, is the breakdown of the family. Lemon actually defended him on that point. Said he didn’t go far enough.
COLMES: Well, it’s interesting. I wonder if there’s a perception, again, this is perception versus reality, that when a white person says something versus when a black person says it, does it sit differently with the American public? I’m just asking that question.
PINKERTON: Here’s the problem from a media point of view and the way the media cover these things. The black who says it, they come after him much, much harder. Bill O’Reilly says it, you know, the liberal gatekeepers don’t really care. They just expect it out of him. But when, you know, when a Juan Williams or a Clarence Thomas or a Larry Elder or a Don Lemon say it, then they really go after him because they want to eliminate that thought from the discourse. The people who are really brave are the African-Americans who say, “Look, we’ve got to reform ourselves, this is an inward thing as well as an outward thing.”
By the way, Don Lemon is no conservative. I was watching his coverage of the Trayvon Martin trial. He’s no conservative. He’s also, you know, a leader in gay-rights. He was covering the Supreme Court’s gay-rights decision from a gay bar in New York City. I mean, he’s a very interesting figure. Let's hope that he has the courage to keep speaking out on this particular issue because it’s probably the most important.
COLMES: I’d like to build on what you just said and also what I said earlier which is we’ll have true equality in this country when someone like Don Lemon or any other person of color can make a statement that doesn't conform with what the so-called majority believes without being called names, without being called an Uncle Tom, and that we can have a diversity of opinion among people of color without that kind of name-calling going on.
SCOTT: And you could add Dr. Ben Carson to that list as well.
It goes without saying that I whole-heartedly agree.
However, I don't beieve I will ever see this in my lifetime.
The left and their media minions are too invested in this not happening.
Racism and racial tension are crucial to their agenda.
If African-Americans were free to speak against the liberal grain without being ridiculed, we might actually have a serious dialogue about race and problems within the black community that could possibly result in meaningful solutions.
That's not what the left wants.
So folks such as Lemon, Carson, Williams, Elder, Thomas, Bill Cosby, Charles Barkley, and Condoleezza Rice whenever they say something not in keeping with what liberals believe they should say will indeed be called Uncle Toms.
If only it weren't the case.
As for Colmes, I never thought I'd say this...Bravo, Alan! Bravo!
(HT Mediaite)
