• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, November 2, 2015

’Tis the season for petitions.

Suddenly, indignant petitioners are campaigning against two TV personalities whose comments offended them -- Raven-Symone of “The View” and anchorman Don Lemon of CNN. 

The medium for these petition-protests is a Web site called Change.org that seems to have emerged as an international landing page for anyone nursing a grievance. For example, the petition on Raven was posted on the site by someone named Che Scott-Heron, identified as a resident of the United Kingdom.

She is unhappy with comments Raven made on “The View” that indicate Raven doesn’t march in lockstep with prevailing viewpoints on the subject of race. So Ms. Scott-Heron thinks Raven should lose her job. “Raven Symone has been spouting her ignorant and self hating spiel on the view for Long [sic] enough,” spouts the petition posted on Change.org.

“African Americans and black people around the diaspora need a voice representative of their views and not a voice representative of what white people want us to say. We need strong black role models in prominent positions on television an [sic] Raven Symone cannot provide that. That is why I ask that we petition to remove her from The View,” writes Ms. Scott-Heron. By Monday morning, this drivel had drawn 129,536 “supporters” (Web-speak for “signers,” presumably), according to a tally on the Web page. 

This petitioner is angry about comments Raven made recently on two subjects -- the topic of “ghetto names” and the story out of South Carolina about the sheriff’s deputy who was videotaped manhandling a high school student. He was subsequently fired.

On “The View,” Raven expressed the opinion that the deputy used excessive force, but at the same time, this teen was refusing to obey school rules about cell phones. “The girl was told multiple times to get off her phone,” Raven reportedly said. “There was no reason for him to be doing this type of harm, but at the same time you’ve got to follow the rules in school.” She made these remarks last Tuesday, and to my knowledge, the world did not end in the days that followed.

Earlier, on another show, Raven was disdainful of so-called “ghetto names.” Said she (according to CNN): “I’m not about to hire you if your name is Watermelondrea. It’s just not going to happen.”

Hey, I’m not stupid (at least not always). I can see why some people would be insulted by this. But at the same time, Raven’s just exercising her right to free speech. Should she really lose her job over these utterances? To its credit, ABC issued a statement supporting Raven, which was the right thing to do. The last thing a TV network should do is cave in to the demands of self-righteous, self-appointed arbiters of public speech and behaviors.

Meanwhile, a petition demanding that CNN fire Don Lemon had 36,130 supporter/signers on Change.org Monday morning. This petition comes courtesy of someone named Jamell Henderson of Brooklyn, who writes: “I’m disappointed that someone I used to look up to now is someone that I have trouble respecting as a journalist. Please join me in calling on CNN to remove Mr. Lemon from his role at the network.”

So this is what we’ve come to: Mr. Henderson’s “disappointment” is so profound and vitally important that Don Lemon ought to lose his job and his livelihood because of it. Specifically, Mr. Henderson is disappointed that Mr. Lemon expressed curiosity about the context of the South Carolina sheriff’s deputy video.

“The part that is most disturbing to me is seeing her thrown around,” Lemon reportedly said last Monday when he appeared as a guest on colleague Wolf Blitzer’s CNN show “The Situation Room.”

“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,” Lemon wondered. “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. … This only shows a small slice in time of what happened. I’d like to know more before passing judgment.”

In his petition, protester Henderson says Lemon “seems to forget the true essence of journalism.” In fact, the opposite is true. The “true essence” of journalism is a healthy combination of curiosity and skepticism -- both of which Lemon expressed.

“We, the people, have no confidence in Mr. Lemon … Therefore, we are asking CNN to remove him from his position,” Henderson’s petition concludes.

I’m tempted to post a petition of my own -- demanding that these idiotic petitions cease immediately.

Tomorrow’s blog: Petitioners protest Donald Trump’s upcoming guest-hosting stint on “Saturday Night Live” this coming weekend.