With over 20 years as the host of Reading Rainbow, if anyone has the right to opine on the significance of literacy, it's LeVar Burton.
The former star of the popular PBS children's show, which had a 23-year-run that ended in 2006, is an author and avid reader. He's continuing his work through his startup organization, LeVar Burton Kids, and his podcast, LeVar Burton Reads.
In a recent interview with Vice, Burton was asked his opinion on the camaraderie Kanye West and Donald Trump. "Oh, here we go with these non-readers," the 61-year-old comically began.
In 2016, Trump said he was "without the time" for books and relayed that he only reads small portions of text. Seven years prior, his Gemini aficionado West professed himself to be a proud non-reader as he finds books to be too "wordy."
“I got something to say about those people like Donald Trump and Kanye West who self-profess themselves as non-readers. And this is what I want to say," Burton said. "I ain’t got time for anyone like that anymore. I ain’t got time for the Kanyes or the Trumps who don’t read as it shows. Go somewhere else with that nonsense, and take that bulls**t someplace else. For as long as people like that will continue to publicly profess this idea to a generation of people, I’ll be standing here for literature until my very last breath."
“We’re certainly living in an era where the paradigm has shifted away from the written word into the moving pixelated image. But it’s not like when writing entered the fray, we just suddenly stopped talking (laughs). There’s no reason why we should stop reading y'all. We gotta keep reading,” he added.
Burton begins his live tour for the LeVar Burton Reads podcast in Washington, D.C on Wednesday.
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