Unprofessional, ignorant, and unlikeable, the ex–CNN anchor is also supremely unremarkable.
He met the fate that awaits all newsmen who are obviously past their prime.
C nn, you may have heard, abruptly fired longtime host Don Lemon last week. He announced his departure in a hastily composed note on social media.
“I was informed this morning by my agent that I have been terminated by CNN,” Lemon said in a statement shared on Twitter. “I am stunned.”
His announcement, which was displayed in large, bright-purple text against a white background, continued: “After 17 years at CNN I would have thought that someone in management would have had the decency to tell me directly. At no time was I ever given any indication that I would not be able to continue to do the work I have loved at the network. It is clear there are some larger issues at play.”
CNN, for its part, disputes Lemon’s version of events.
His “statement about this morning’s events is inaccurate,” a company spokesperson said. “He was offered an opportunity to meet with management but instead released a statement on Twitter.”
Leave it to Lemon, one of the most hilariously unprofessional clowns in an industry positively chockablock with clowns, to screw up his own termination.
More amusing (and interesting) than the details of Lemon’s unwilling departure from CNN is the fact that no one seems to care. One would think that, after Lemon spent 17 years at one of the three big cable-news networks, his unceremonious and acrimonious exit would generate widespread interest and intrigue. But one would be wrong. Lemon’s firing barely registered as a blip on the general commentariat’s radar.
This may be because the eminently more interesting Tucker Carlson abruptly exited Fox on the same day. Why would anyone care about a former prime-time anchor and now morning-show co-host of obviously ebbing cable cachet when Fox News’s immensely popular marquee anchor was let go under similarly mysterious conditions?
It’s like the day Farah Fawcett died all over again. One simply can’t compete with Michael Jackson’s death.
And for the precious few who paid attention to Lemon’s ouster, the only genuinely interesting question regarding his abrupt firing is this: What took CNN so long? For what good reason did the network keep him on staff for so many years? It certainly wasn’t for his ratings. Lemon was ratings poison. It wasn’t because he was dearly beloved by his CNN colleagues. Quite the opposite, apparently. That Lemon was detested by even the minor characters at CNN has been the subject of much discussion and rumor for several years. CNN couldn’t possibly have held on to Lemon for nearly two decades for his cutting insight or news chops for the simple fact that he possesses neither. In fact, for nearly 20 years, Lemon has been the butt-end of much media commentary and reporting, his oftentimes asinine or cruel on-air remarks the stuff of comms nightmares.
In 2014, for example, when Lemon interviewed a woman who claimed that Bill Cosby drugged and raped her, the cable-news host asked why the alleged victim didn’t simply bite her assailant’s penis.
“You know,” mused Lemon, “there are ways not to perform oral sex if you didn’t want to do it. Meaning the using of the teeth, right? Biting.”
No one appreciated that interaction.
In 2022, Jamie Rohme, the acting director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Hurricane Center in Miami, was forced to politely fact-check Lemon on-air after the cable host insisted on tying Hurricane Ian to climate change.
“I don’t think you can link climate change to any one event,” Rohme said. “On the whole, on the cumulative, climate change may be making storms worse. But to link it to any one event, I would caution against that.”
Lemon, the expert, interrupted, “Listen, I grew up there [in Florida], and these storms are intensifying — something is causing them to intensify.”
Remember, up until his firing this week, CNN was paying Lemon an estimated $4 million per year for this type of “news” coverage and analysis.
Speaking of being humiliated on live television by his own guests, Lemon was likewise embarrassed in 2022 when he asked royal commentator Hilary Fordwich whether the royal family should be made to pay reparations for slavery.
“Across the entire world, when slavery was taking place, which was the first nation in the world that abolished slavery?” Fordwich asked, and then answered her own question: “the British.”
“In Great Britain,” she added, “they abolished slavery. Two thousand naval men died on the high seas trying to stop slavery. Why? Because the African kings were rounding up their own people. They had them [in] cages, waiting in the beaches.”
“If reparations need to be paid,” Fordwich concluded, “we need to go right back to the beginning of that supply chain and say, ‘Who was rounding up their own people and having them handcuffed in cages?’ Absolutely, that’s where they should start.”
Lemon, naturally, had no response. Ignorant of so very many things, not limited to reparations and weather events, he can perhaps be excused.
Speaking of overwhelming ignorance, Lemon in 2020 tried his hand briefly at Christian theology, declaring, “Jesus Christ, if that’s who you believe in, Jesus Christ, admittedly was not perfect when He was here on this earth.” On the contrary, for those who “believe in” Him, the question of whether Jesus was “perfect” has not been a matter of serious debate for more than 1,500 years. The question is answered in 1 Peter 2:22, Hebrews 5:9, Hebrews 7:26, Hebrews 7:28, and 1 Corinthians 15:22. The creed of Saint Athanasius also calls Christ “Perfect God, Perfect Man.” Moreover, in a.d. 451, the Council of Chalcedon declared of Christ’s nature, “like us in all things but sin.”
Unfortunately, there’s more Lemonian theology where this comes from. In 2021, for example, the ex-CNN anchor declared that it was time for the Roman Catholic Church to “reexamine” its teachings on faith and morals, because God is not about “judging people.”
On the contrary, the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, which all Christians hold in common, state that the Son of God will come “to judge the living and the dead.” Look also to Judges 11:27, Isaiah 33:22, Romans 2:16, 2 Timothy 4:8, Hebrews 12:23, and James 4:12, wherein God is identified specifically as “judge.” The Bible is full of phrases such as “the Lord, the judge,” “the Lord is our judge,” and “the Lord, the righteous judge.”
What do you suppose Lemon thinks the phrase “Final Judgment” means? For that matter, what do you suppose Lemon thinks?
When he wasn’t bungling the basic details of a 2,023-year-old religion, Lemon, who calls himself a journalist, was busy playing the role of the hyperpartisan, advocating for Democratic causes and policies, even if doing so meant contradicting himself.
In May 2020, for example, as anti-police rioters marauded through small towns and cities across the country, Lemon defended them, referring to the violence as the “mechanism for a restructure of our country or for some sort of change.” Later, after the riots started to adversely affect Democrats in the polls, Lemon declared, “The rioting has to stop. . . . It’s showing up in the polling. It’s showing up in focus groups. It is the only thing — it is the only thing right now that is sticking.”
In 2021, during President Biden’s disastrous and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, you better believe Lemon fell squarely on the side of defending the Democratic president.
“I think people should stop beating up on the administration so much,” he said, “because, no matter how it ended, everyone wasn’t going to be happy with the way it ended.”
He then blamed the Americans who were left stranded in the Taliban-controlled country, saying, “We do have to remember there are people who went there, and were told they needed to leave, and they didn’t leave.”
Even in the small things, Lemon managed to fumble basic facts.
“Loretta Lynch recused herself from any decision regarding Hillary Clinton because of that meeting of Hillary Clinton and Loretta Lynch, who was attorney general at the time, on the tarmac,” Lemon said in 2017.
Former attorney general Loretta Lynch did not recuse herself from the federal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Lynch also did not meet with Hillary Clinton on a tarmac as federal agents reviewed the former secretary of state’s emails. Lynch met with former president Bill Clinton.
Lemon could be catty, too, such as the time he attacked former president Donald Trump by attacking Melania Trump.
“What is it about President Obama that really gets under your skin?” Lemon mused of Trump’s infamous dislike for former president Barack Obama. “Is it because he’s smarter than you? . . . Wife is more accomplished? Better looking?”
Lemon wasn’t even a good advocate for the First Amendment and press freedoms.
“I do think that social media, just like any other media company,” he said, “should face some sort of consequences. And they should be regulated. And at the very least, what you put on there should be true, and if it’s not true, then it should be actionable.”
He added, “If it’s not true, don’t allow people to put it up there. Have them face consequences.”
Then, of course, there was the recent dustup in which Lemon, 57, accused former Republican South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, 51, of being past “her prime.”
“Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime, sorry,” Lemon remarked. “When a woman is considered to be in her prime — in her 20s, 30s and maybe her 40s.”
Lemon added defensively, “Don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just saying what the facts are. Google it.” But nobody needed to “Google it” to know what Lemon was getting at. Haley had proposed that septuagenarian and octogenarian political candidates take cognitive tests. Lemon’s response was to say that the former governor of South Carolina is one to talk, considering she is past her sexual sell-by date.
Lastly, who can forget the time in 2014 when Lemon suggested that Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, which still has not been recovered, may have been swallowed by a black hole?
“People are saying to me, why aren’t you talking about the possibility that something odd happened to this plane, something beyond our understanding?” he said. “A lot of people have been asking about that, about black holes.”
“I know it’s preposterous — but is it preposterous?” Lemon asked.
Four million dollars per year, folks. Four million dollars per year.
How did an anchor with such a rich history of embarrassing moments and unflattering interactions last so long? No one outside of CNN seems to know or, more embarrassingly for Lemon, to care. Because on top of being unprofessional, ignorant, and unlikeable, Lemon is also supremely unremarkable (to everyone except perhaps a handful of media critics). He will fade into obscurity, the public able to recall only vaguely something stupid he once said.
It’s the fate that awaits all newsmen who are obviously past their prime.