MAUREEN CALLAHAN: A misogynist over-squeezed Lemon insults women, sheds viewers and STILL has a job

Don Lemon is a misogynist. It’s time for him to go.

Here he was on Thursday, flanked by his two young co-hosts, to whom he has shown nothing but disdain, explaining to them, and to his fading CNN audience, why Nikki Haley for president is not a good start.

After Haley called for a generational shift and mental competency tests for politicians over 75, Lemon told America, once again, what he really thinks of women.

Spoiler alert: not much.

“All this talk about age makes me uncomfortable,” Lemon said in part. “She says that people, you know, politicians are suddenly not at their best. Nikki Haley is not in her best moment. I’m sorry. When a woman is at her best [is] in their 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.’

Sub in any other cohort here, based on race, gender identity, or sexual orientation, and Lemon would have been fired on the spot. But on CNN’s new boss Chris Licht, apparently he’s fine.

Lemon STILL gets a pass for denigrating women, bullying his female colleagues, as Lemon has been widely reported to do, and can continue to report on a gender he feels is biologically inferior.

When Lemon’s co-host, Poppy Harlow, 40, backed down, Lemon was more insistent.

‘What are you talking about?’ Harlow asked. ‘Main for what?’

“That doesn’t agree with me,” Lemon said.

Ah, the intellectual bravery of the fanatic.

“It depends,” he continued. ‘It’s just, like, main. If you look for it. If you google, ‘What is a woman in her prime?’ she will say 20, 30, 40.

‘Are you talking about prime for, like, having kids?’ Harlow asked. ‘Or are you talking about a bonus for being president?’

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Lemon replied. I’m just stating what the facts are. Google it.’

Google it! Is this what CNN considers an A-list journalist? And you are allowed to treat your colleague on the air with such disdain and disdain? Lemon has just told Harlow, to his face, that he is getting old for no earthly use.

But he, as a 56-year-old man, well, he’s a star, don’t you know?

As a CNN source told DailyMail.com exclusively, Lemon is “rude, self-righteous and downright sexist.”

It’s time for Lemon to go. Sure, she apologized, but who really thinks she’s sorry? He called her comments “irrelevant” and “witless,” but that’s a dodge. His statements were hateful and misogynistic, and if Donald Trump had said the same about Haley, CNN would be publishing high-octane outrage 24/7.

That CNN source also told MailOnline.com that Lemon’s apology “didn’t mean anything.” Lemon himself doubled down on his call to CNN staff Friday morning as he was given the day off. “I’m going to continue to be who I am,” he said.

Excellent. CNN should let him continue that search elsewhere.

According to the New York Times, Licht himself began the call by saying that Lemon’s “comments were upsetting, unacceptable, and unfair to his co-hosts, and ultimately a major distraction from the great work of this organization.”

That’s all very well, but will there be consequences?

We could also call CNN the Neanderthal Chauvinist Network.

Lemon doesn’t seem to be taking any of this seriously, calling from Miami as if on vacation, stating that “the people closest to me in this organization are women.”

Echoes of anyone accused of racism who claims that ‘some of my best friends are black’.

Nikki Haley is 51 years old. Make no mistake: Don Lemon considers himself, five years Haley’s senior, in his prime. To say that he is not is nothing more than sexism. Would he dare say something like that about our octogenarian president? Or Licht, his boss, who is Haley’s age?

Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, was the first woman and non-white person elected governor of South Carolina.

For a guy like Lemon, who wrote a book called This Is Fire: What I Tell My Friends About Racism, you’d think he’d appreciate, even celebrate, Haley’s accomplishments.

But she is 51 years old and a woman, so: What glass ceiling? What should Lemon think of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi or Sonia Sotomayor? AOC, according to Don Lemon, has a few good years left.

What a shame it is.

Ever since Lemon was ousted from hosting his own primetime show on CNN to co-hosting a morning show flanked by two younger women, he has shown nothing but contempt for them: interrupting them, ignoring them, talking over them, and, according to reportedly yelling at her co-host Kaitlan Collins, 30, in front of the entire team, causing her to run off in tears.

Lemon has a history of these things. She asked conservative commentator SE Cupp, who had lost her train of thought during an on-air appearance, if she had ‘mommy brain’. She has said that male athletes should be paid more than female athletes because they are ‘more interesting to watch’.

Not to mention committing a journalistic crime on par with former CNN host Chris Cuomo, Lemon’s ‘brother’, colluding to smear Andrew Cuomo’s accusers: Lemon secretly tipped off Jussie Smollett, who was ultimately convicted for lying to the police about being the victim. of a racially motivated attack, which the police were investigating.

Don Lemon is a total bottom. If Chris Licht and CNN executives care one iota about the women in their workplace, from on-air talent to producers, crew and executives, they will show there is zero tolerance for sexism at CNN and fire Lemon.

Any woman who has ever worked for a misogynist can tell you: Few things are more discouraging. You can be the best on your team, the best performer, smarter than the guy above you, and nothing you do will be enough. And if you think institutional sexism is no longer an issue in the workplace, consider a 2022 report from the US Census Bureau, which found that women still earn 84 cents on the dollar compared to men. , a gap that only widens with age.

Here’s another thing for Lemon to consider: Women in their 50s are often at the height of their superpowers. If they have older children, the hard work of parenting is almost over. If they have young children, they are masters of multitasking, organization, and time management. They have a career and life experience, just like their male counterparts, but it’s likely that they’ve navigated more obstacles, more soft-spoken prejudice and sexual harassment, more selfish jerks like Don Lemon to get to where they are.

And they’ve had to deal with judgments about their appearance, weight, and sexual viability, exactly what Lemon was referring to in his misogynistic barrage against Haley.

How can Chris Licht credibly put Don Lemon in front of any female politician or power broker or random woman who suddenly finds herself in the news and expects him, and by extension CNN, to do right by them?

Light can’t.

Here’s Don Lemon interviewing Joan Tarshis, who claimed to be one of Bill Cosby’s many rape victims, asking her why she didn’t just bite off his penis and walk away. You couldn’t make this up.

Lemon: ‘You know, there are ways to not perform oral sex if you don’t want to.’

Tarshis: ‘I was a little high at the time,’ we know Cosby’s modus operandi was to drug his victims, ‘and honestly, that didn’t even cross my mind. Now I wish he had.

Lemon: ‘Right. That is, the use of teeth, right? as a weapon

This is Don Lemon blaming the victim, another rape entirely. Honestly, nine-year-olds who have seen an episode of ‘Law & Order: SVU’ have a better understanding of fight or flight, of panic mode, of fear that someone raping you might also be someone who could kill you. .

The women who work at CNN, and the few who still watch Lemon’s morning show are losing viewership faster than a Persian cat, down 18.6 percent in the key demo 25-54, deserve better. In reality, they just deserve to be treated and talked about as equals. That’s not a high bar to clear.

As the Daily Beast reported on Thursday, the women at CNN had had enough of Lemon.

“There were complaints of mansplaining,” a source told The Beast. ‘And how much longer must women be talked to before there is a change.’

So CNN: How much longer?