On Monday, after 17 years at CNN, Don Lemon said that the network had fired him. Lemon joined that network after anchoring at NBC Chicago and working as a correspondent for NBC News, the “TODAY” show and “NBC Nightly News.” It was a shocking fall from grace for the star anchor. Lemon had built up a loyal following as one of the few Black and queer anchors in prime-time cable news, but he had recently been accused of a pattern of on-air sexism as well as serious gender-based harassment behind the scenes of his shows. Unlike the firing of Tucker Carlson, his evolving legacy feels a little bit more complicated, and so are my feelings about it.
It was a shocking fall from grace for the star anchor. Lemon had built up a loyal following as one of the few Black and queer anchors in prime-time cable news.
The exact reasons for his firing remain unclear, but it comes on the heels of a series of troubling public and private accusations. As reported in a recent Variety magazine story, Lemon had been accused of sexist behavior for almost the whole time he was at the network. (NBC News has not independently verified the allegations Variety published.) In February on “CNN This Morning” (Lemon was moved from his prime-time news show in September) he made his now infamous comments about former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. He said the 51-year-old Haley — and, actually, any woman at least 50 — was past her prime.
“When I make a mistake, I own it,” Lemon said after that controversy. “And I own this one as well.” As for Variety’s report, in a statement, a spokesperson for Lemon said that it was “amazing and disappointing that Variety would be so reckless” and that the article “which is riddled with patently false anecdotes and no concrete evidence, is entirely based on unsourced, unsubstantiated, 15-year-old anonymous gossip.”
CNN suspended Lemon for his remarks about Haley, and in a February email to the network’s employees, CNN CEO Chris Licht said of Lemon: “He has agreed to participate in formal training, as well as continuing to listen and learn. We take this situation very seriously.”
Perhaps. But allegations of Lemon’s sexism appear to stretch back to 2006 — and his remarks about Haley were made months ago. This is where it gets more complex. We must also question the racial politics at play given that Lemon spent one of his final days at the CNN desk pushing back against conservative presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s lies about the civil rights movement. Ramaswamy was pushing the falsehood that the NRA championed gun rights for Black people.
The optics of Ramaswamy, the U.S.-born son of Indian immigrants, lecturing Lemon, a queer Southern-born Black man, about the history of Black struggle were striking.
Whatever reasons CNN may have for letting Lemon go, the decision to fire him shortly after that interview went viral has helped fuel the perception that there isn’t much appetite among media executives for Black folk simultaneously calling out racism and pushing back against the gun lobby. It will also suggest that a Black male journalist rejecting “alternative facts” in real time can be wrongly miscast as “the angry Black man.”
Up until last year, there was a reason Lemon meant a lot to cable TV viewers and to Black viewers in particular. Lemon didn’t just bring the news. He also brought personality. Viral clips of him abound. A particularly hilarious one captures him bursting into laughter with guests Marc Lamont Hill and Angela Rye, much to the chagrin of stony-faced conservative pundit Paris Dennard, after Dennard suggested that a Black man wearing a red MAGA cap to The Cheesecake Factory “shouldn’t be verbally accosted.” And who can forget Lemon’s annual appearances at CNN’s New Year’s Eve celebration? Whether he was drunkenly recounting the state of his romantic life or getting his ears pierced on live television, Lemon was always must-see TV.
This now-tarnished legacy was hard fought. Lemon was not afraid to connect to the news he reported. For example, when he revealed his own experiences with colorism growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he added texture to a news story about the insidious nature of internalized racism. Lemon tackled controversial topics head-on. In January 2018, then-President Donald Trump referred to African countries, Haiti and El Salvador as “s—hole countries.” Lemon, unlike other journalists who used equivocating language, said: “This is ‘CNN Tonight,’ I’m Don Lemon. The president of the United States is racist. A lot of us already knew that.”
Lemon’s charisma seems to have convinced CNN to keep him around despite his female colleagues reportedly complaining about him for years.
Lemon could be a contrarian at times. During President Barack Obama’s administration, he developed a reputation for sharply questioning guests and pundits who came to advocate for the nation’s first Black president. In some ways, this pivot from his previous, more congenial persona, was not always welcomed and was even viewed as opportunistic. But Lemon’s transition to a more hard-hitting interviewer who challenged guests from both sides of the aisle stood out, especially in a media landscape where partisan commentary is increasingly the norm. During the Trump years, Lemon pivoted once again, becoming bold in his criticism of racism. His response to Trump’s racist remarks on Black and Latino countries was an example of that change.
It’s ironic that one of cable TV’s most reliable voices against racism was let go the same day as one of cable TV’s most reliable voices in support of racism.
Ultimately, Lemon’s charisma seems to have convinced CNN to keep him around despite his female colleagues reportedly complaining about him for years. But he got fired a few days after he called out a conservative’s made-up nonsense about the NRA’s advocacy for Black people. What an awful message to send to women and, though the two groups obviously aren’t mutually exclusive, what an unfortunate message to send to Black people.
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