Within an hour of breaking news about Fox News parting ways with their highly rated right-wing pundit, Tucker Carlson, CNN announced it had sacked long-time anchor Don Lemon.
"Don will forever be part of the CNN family, and we thank him for his contributions over the past 17 years," CNN said in a statement. Many would argue that personnel news about CNN should be in our center column, though right-column devotees probably would not. CNN's new president, Chris Licht, who came to the cable news channel from CBS' Late Show with Stephen Colbert has been trying to push its back to a centrist outlet, neutral on news since March.
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Are Book Publishers Too 'Woke'?
Novelist attorney Richard North Patterson kvetched about “identity politics” and the reaction by mainstream publishers to his latest novel, Trial, in a Wall Street Journal Review section guest column this past weekend.
Patterson describes the novel in question: “It concerns the televised trial of an 18-year-old Black voting rights worker, stemming from the fatal shooting of a white sheriff’s deputy during a late-night traffic stop in rural Georgia.”
The “identity politics” concerns are over whether a white novelist can place a Black character as a – or the – lead in a work of fiction without committing racial appropriation. Patterson writes he had no "illusions" he would be immune from a book-publishing "belief that white authors should not attempt to write from the perspective of nonwhite characters or about societal problems that affect minorities." His 23rd novel, Trial, will be published by the small, independent imprint, Post Hill Press, on June 13.
Fears of such a backlash smack of “political correctness” or “wokeness” in the current idiom -- core of the hard-right’s gripe with progressives.
Patterson’s column is worth a read, though you must have a WSJ subscription. Go to https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-my-new-novel-about-racial-conflict-ran-into-trouble-53a53f54?mod=Searchresults_pos2&page=1 then come back here and leave a comment – in this column if you lean left; in the one on the opposite side if you lean right. Or email editors@thehustings.newsand tells us whether you’re liberal or conservative in the subject line.