Don Lemon Walked Off Don t Come to This Network Again to a Guest
Gay CNN Anchor Sees Risk in Book
Don Lemon, the weekend prime-time ballast for CNN, was on the air on Sunday night this month when the news broke that President Obama would address the nation at the unusual hour of 10:30 p.k.
By the time the news network was confirming the reports of the decease of Osama bin Laden, notwithstanding, Mr. Lemon had been replaced by CNN's chief ballast, Wolf Blitzer.
"I kind of got large-footed," Mr. Lemon said, with a knowing laugh.
Now 45, though he looks much younger, Mr. Lemon understands the telly news business from long experience, gathered through jobs at such local stations as WCAU in Philadelphia, WMAQ in Chicago and WNYW in New York.
And then he has no illusions well-nigh what he is getting himself into with the book he has written about his career — and life. In "Transparent," Mr. Lemon has a lot to say about reporting for telly and most journalism in full general. Only he knows enough about news to recognize what will get this book noticed.
"People are going to say: 'Oh, he was molested as a kid and at present he is coming out.' I get it," he said.
Few national tv set news anchors or hosts take publicly acknowledged existence gay. Rachel Maddow is perhaps the all-time known. Her MSNBC colleague, Thomas Roberts, has too come out equally gay.
Mr. Lemon has not made a hole-and-corner of his sexual orientation in his work life; many of his CNN co-workers and managers have long been aware that he is gay. Just he still best-selling that going public in his book carries certain risks.
"I'm scared," he said in a telephone interview. "I'm talking about something that people might shun me for, ostracize me for."
Even across whatever upshot his revelation might have on his television career, Mr. Lemon said he recognized this step carried special gamble for him as a blackness human.
"It's quite different for an African-American male," he said. "It'southward about the worst thing y'all can be in blackness culture. You're taught you have to be a man; yous have to be masculine. In the black community they think you tin can pray the gay away." He said he believed the negative reaction to male homosexuality had to practise with the history of discrimination that still affects many black Americans, as well as the attitudes of some blackness women.
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"You lot're afraid that black women will say the aforementioned things they do almost how blackness men should exist dating black women." He added, "I guess this makes me a double minority now."
So why do it? Information technology really came down to the act of writing the volume. Mr. Lemon said he had been on a panel a couple of years ago called "The Blackness Human being in the Age of Obama," and was approached subsequently past a publisher's representative nearly writing an inspirational book.
"It was supposed to be a little pamphlet," he said. "You know: say your prayers; have a good, hearty handshake; say adept forenoon to your boss."
Only as he began to write, he came to realize that he could not hold back the truth of who he was. He started to pour out the details of his personal life. How he had grown up non knowing his male parent, how he had suffered abuse by someone close to him.
When he informed the publisher of his new tack, the initial reaction was circumspection. But when the editors saw the fabric, they embraced information technology. It was left to Mr. Lemon to experience a tour of nerves and suggest at one point that the nigh personal fabric exist taken out.
"But as I started to read information technology back, I said, no, leave information technology," Mr. Lemon said. "I abhor hypocrisy. I think if you lot're going to be in the concern of news, and telling people the truth, of trying to shed light in dark places, and then you've got to be honest. Y'all've got to have the same rules for yourself as yous do for everyone else."
He has been bodacious of support by CNN, which has booked him equally a invitee Mon on its daytime bear witness "CNN Newsroom." He will likewise be on Joy Behar's show on the network's sister channel, HLN. A few other possibilities remain "up in the air," he said.
Mr. Lemon said he knew that coming out this way would stir upwards a degree of annotate about other telly news personalities, and whether whatsoever would admit being gay.
"I think it would be great if everybody could be out," he said. "Simply it'south such a personal choice. People take to do it at their own speed. I respect that. I do have to say that the more people who come out, the meliorate it is for everyone, certainly for the Tyler Clementis of the world."
Mr. Clementi was the Rutgers student who committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge subsequently his sexual run into with a man in his dorm room was shown on the Net.
"I think if I had seen more people like me who are out and proud, it wouldn't have taken me 45 years to say it," Mr. Lemon said, "to walk in the truth."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/business/media/16anchor.html
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