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…
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