Sending threatening text messages to a female colleague. Making fun of another woman by mimicking her on the air. Asking a co-anchor if, perhaps, she was having trouble remembering a statistic in the newscast because she had “mommy brain.”
These are just a few of the allegations — many of them captured on camera for the world to see — leveled at CNN anchor Don Lemon in a Variety report released on Wednesday. But Lemon was already facing increased scrutiny for voicing an extremely sexist opinion about a woman in a position of power.
In February, Lemon pronounced, on air, that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who recently announced her presidential bid, was not “in her prime.” Haley, at 51, is six years younger than Lemon.
The comment prompted widespread condemnation from both the left and the right, as well as from Lemon’s colleagues, and he was absent from CNN for two days. Lemon has since apologized for the Haley comments and, through a CNN spokesperson, denied the allegations in the Variety story.
Lemon is far from the first male pundit, however, to lob misogynist insults at women who have the audacity to run for office. Whether it’s cracks about their clothes, face, body, or even parenting, sexist comments are pretty much a rite of passage for any woman in American politics today.
“It is so normalized,” said A’Shanti Gholar, president of Emerge, an organization that recruits Democratic women candidates. Political commentators routinely focus on women’s age or appearance, she says, “instead of their policies, their positions, and their effectiveness.”
Americans generally claim to be egalitarian; in a December 2022 USA Today/Suffolk University poll, for…
Read the full article here
