CNN anchor Don Lemon claimed Wednesday that the real problem with cancel culture was the people using it as a shield to keep being racist, sexist and homophobic.
Lemon joined CNN’s “New Day” to discuss a wide range of topics, and he said that he was in favor of giving people second and third and even fourth chances because he believed in redemption — but the real problem was the people who claimed “woke culture has gone too far” because it meant they couldn’t be racist or sexist anymore. (RELATED: Don Lemon Opposes The Name Calling But Not The Sentiment When Democratic Leader Calls Tim Scott An ‘Oreo’)
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Brianna Keilar began the conversation by mentioning longtime Democratic strategist James Carville and his claim that the Democratic Party had a “wokeness problem.”
“I wonder what you think about that,” she said, turning to Lemon.
“I think the entire country has a wokeness problem because there’s one side, I hate these little catch-all phrases, there’s one side wants to use it as a pejorative, and then there’s another side that wants to hold people to a standard that no one can be held to,” Lemon began, adding that he believed no one could ever attain perfection and that it was important to leave room for people to simply be human and fallible.
“This country is supposed to be about restitution, and about second, and third, and sometimes even fourth chances. After awhile people do the same thing over and over, they’re ignorant about it, they can’t be changed,” Lemon continued, arguing that it was wrong to “cancel” people for a single mistake or even a few mistakes, especially when those people were working together themselves.
“I’ve gotten I don’t know how many chances in my life. And I think that I am a good person. I’m not, you know, I’m not perfect, no one is,” Lemon said, pivoting then to address the people he thought were the problem.
“On the other side, people want to be able to do bigoted things, racist things, ignorant things, continue to operate in a system that is no longer operable. They want to be able to do it with impunity. And that’s not — that’s not the way it should be,” he said, noting changes in the country that had brought women and minorities to the table.
“People of color and women have agency and authority now, and they’re standing up for rights and saying how they want to be treated, and you can’t say, ‘Well, just because I can’t be a sexist or I can’t make this homophobic joke any more or discriminate against people, that woke culture has gone too far,’ it’s ridiculous,” Lemon concluded.