Don Lemon was a newsman. For years he broadcast across America, a bright smile and a great presentation style which not only informed, it challenged those in his sights and, not to a huge extent, mined into the stories he covered with an informal but determined aire.
He worked on CNN from 2006 to his ignominous end in 2022, when it was revealed there was unacceptable behaviour towards female members of staff, misogyny no less. And thus he was cast out, into the cold, bleak nowhereland youtube and podcasts. Where I now reside. Except he has listeners and viewers. Millions of them. Where as I… Hello, Doug. Hope you are well and good luck at the dentists.
But the thing about Lemon is he took a lot of his audience with him; that’s not to say whatever happened or didn’t happen during his CNN tenure wasn’t serious, it was that a good percentage of the audience liked Don Lemon.
He went on to do a show on Twitter, and interviewed Elon Musk. That got cancelled. And so we move to now, and with the firing of Joy Reid and her colleagues – all people of colour – Don Lemon, himself a person of colour, had special insight into what that felt like. But the support for Reid wasn’t across the board, and Meghan Kelly, former something because I am not even sure she counts as anything, had something to say..

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