Don Lemon just published his thoughts about the end of the Late Show. You’ll be shocked to learn that he thinks it’s all part of a plot, one in which failed white men are silencing anyone who challenges Republicans. Lemon says he was the canary in the coal mine and Colbert is just the next victim.
The networks didn’t like me asking conservatives hard questions. CNN didn’t like the mirror I was holding up every night. So they pushed me out. And I thought: if it happened to me it will happen to others. It will trickle down. Or up. Depending on how you look at it.
Now it has trickled all the way to late night television.
It has been three years since Don Lemon was fired and most of us probably don’t think about him all that often anymore. But just as a reminder, Don Lemon was not fired because he was such a tough interviewer. He was fired because he was a prickly, arrogant man who repeatedly offended the two women co-hosts CNN had paired him with. Remember this?
Don Lemon: “Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime. Sorry, when a woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s, and 30s, and maybe 40s…”
Poppy Harlow: “Are you talking about prime for like child bearing?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger! I’m just saying what the facts are! Google it!” pic.twitter.com/n1HmtkWTpl
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 16, 2023
We unpacked all this stuff years ago but very briefly, Lemon is attacking Nikki Haley, who was then 51, as someone not in her prime. Why? Because Haley had suggested that some politicians were too old to serve. I’m guessing she might have been talking about Joe Biden at the time and we all know how that worked out. Biden was too damn old and was losing his faculties when she said it.
There was at least one report at the time that female staffers at CNN threatened to quit if Lemon wasn’t fired over his remarks. In any case, CNN fired him and it had nothing to do with him asking conservatives hard questions. It had to do with him being a misogynist creep.
And by the way, just about 18 months ago, Lemon showed his true colors again by attacking Megyn Kelly by saying she looked trans. Had CNN not already fired him, he’d have been fired for that. The point is, he seems to have a problem with conservative women in particular which he expresses in juvenile ways. Even when he apologized for those remarks the best he could do was, “Perhaps I should apologize to the trans community because no one wants to look like Megyn Kelly.”
When it comes to why Colbert was fired, Lemon’s analysis isn’t much better.
CBS says The Late Show was cancelled because it was losing $40 to $50 million a year. That may be true. The traditional late night model is genuinely under financial pressure. The way people consume media has changed…
But here is what is also true. The cancellation was announced two days after Colbert publicly criticized Trump’s settlement with Paramount, CBS’s parent company, over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Colbert called himself, on air, “a martyr of free speech.” He was not performing. He believed it. And I believe him.
I am of two minds about all of it. I want to say that clearly. Both things can be true at once. The economics of late night television may no longer support a show at this scale. And there may also have been pressure applied in exactly the right place at the right time by the right people who were tired of being made to look ridiculous every single night.
Here’s the thing. If Colbert was making the network $40 million a year instead of losing that much, no amount of pressure could have dislodged him. He would have been there forever. So he’s not a victim of embarrassed conservatives, he’s a victim of declining ad rates. Lemon knows this but still can’t admit it undermines his theory.
Finally we get to the part where he ties this all together.
The world that produced The Late Show, the world of legacy media, cable news, and network television, has long had a problem nobody wanted to name out loud. It is a world that has been extraordinarily good to a very specific kind of person. White men who fail spectacularly and are promoted for it. White men who make catastrophic decisions and are handed bigger offices for it. White men who are visibly, demonstrably unqualified and are given more power anyway. I have watched it for thirty years. I have been managed by it. I have been undone by it.
The executive producer who ran The Late Show for years eventually left. And somehow landed in my world. That same person, from that same television orbit, eventually became my boss at CNN. And fired me.
That’s his theory. Chris Licht is a white male failure and that’s why the Late Show failed and why Lemon got fired.
I already pointed out that’s not why Lemon got fired and the failure of the Late Show has to do with ad rates that have impacted every show, not just Colbert’s. But I think the funniest part of this is that Colbert seems to genuinely like and respect Chris Licht. When he was named as the next head of CNN (and Lemon’s boss) Colbert gave him a warm send-off.
So I don’t think Stephen Colbert buys into Lemon’s theory about failed white men being responsible for all of Don’s troubles. Now I plan to go back to ignoring him.
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