Don Lemon has to be the sorriest excuse for an anchor I've ever seen. How is it possible for anyone to watch the video of that student being dragged out of her desk and thrown on the floor and consider the idea that there might be a possibility the cop was right?
If a parent did that and it was caught on video, that kid would be in the custody of Child Protective Services, just that fast. No questions asked. Remove kid first, ask questions later. But in this case, Don Lemon was perfectly comfortable questioning what his eyes were seeing.
It all started when Blitzer initially gave the floor to CNN analyst Tom Fuentes and Lemon, who were both hesitant to totally assign blame to the officer for the videos’ disturbing footage. Lemon was especially unsure, saying “I don’t know.”
“It does look disturbing,” said the CNN anchor. “The part that is most disturbing to me is seeing her thrown around. As far as the desk going over, I don’t know if the desk fell over because she didn’t want to get up or if he pushed it over. I don’t know. I think there’s context to everything. I would like to see what happens before and I would like to see what happened afterwards… It does look horrible. It does look like there’s no excuse for what he’s doing to her, but again, we don’t know… This only show a small slice in time of what happened. I’d like to know more before passing judgment.”
Sunny Hostin would have none of it. She cut straight to the chase.
She exploded at the panel: “Are you guys kidding me?”
During the minute that followed, Lemon and Hostin took turns yelling at and interrupting one another.
“No, we’re not kidding. We don’t know what happened,” said Lemon. “You weren’t sitting in the room, Sunny. You don’t know if she wasn’t standing up!”
“I don’t need to know more,” Hostin retorted, to which Lemon said: “You do need to know more! As a prosecutor, you should want to know more.”
“This is a young girl!” she shouted, emphasizing the girl’s age in comparison to the school resource officer.
Lemon persisted, noting that all the facts should be sought out and analyzed before passing judgment on the situation. Fuentes and Blitzer didn’t say anything throughout the exchange, though they mostly agreed in their own comments. Hostin, however, never relented until the show host interrupted the segment to show a second video.
Visit the Mediaite post for a collection of Twitter reactions to that exchange. Speaking for me, it's just contemptible that we have such a craven, immoral media that they can't even see what's right before their very eyes.
This is why Republicans believe they've got 2016 in the bag no matter who their candidate is, it's why we can't actually have honest discussions about the problems in this country, and it's why media cannot be trusted.
It's right in front of their eyes. There are several camera angles. It's not magic, it's not voodoo. The cop yanked the girl forward, rolled her on her head on the floor, dragged her across the room and planted his knee in her back. She wasn't armed, she wasn't moving, she wasn't threatening him in any way. Yet Don Lemon just isn't sure he can believe what he's seeing.
The only difference between me and Sunny Hostin would have been "WTF is your damn problem, Don?"
