TV news anchors aren't just worse than you imagine — they're worse than you can imagine. Today's case in point is Don Lemon, formerly of CNN and very nearly of Twitter/X.
I hope you've already read Victoria Taft's report on Lemon's list of absurd demands from Twitter/X owner Elon Musk, including a free Tesla Cybertruck, a $5 million signing bonus, an $8 million yearly salary, equity in Twitter/X, and — I loved this bit of chutzpah — veto control over editorial changes at the company.
Don. Freaking. Lemon.
This is the same guy who asked on network television if a black hole could have swallowed the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 back in 2014. “That’s what people are saying,” Lemon claimed. “I know it’s preposterous — but is it preposterous?”
Just a little teensy black hole. One big enough to suck up a passenger jet but leave the rest of the planet untouched. Hardly preposterous at all — for someone too uninformed to talk about space stuff with a curious fourth-grader, much less world events with grown adult humans.
Yet instead of being laughed out of his job with extreme prejudice against public moronity, CNN continued to pay Lemon millions of dollars each year for "news" programs that went virtually unwatched.
Lemon, however, is just a symptom of what's wrong with network news that I'll get to in a moment.
There comes a point in the agent/client relationship when the agent has to have The Talk with the client.
It might go something like this.
"Don, I've represented you for a long time and we've done some great things but you were always trouble. You couldn't get along with people. Your ratings sucked. And, jeebus, man, no matter how many times I told you to zip it instead of opening your big trap? You're a good-looking 58-year-old gay man — middle-aged suburban women are your audience. You can't keep saying they're 'past their prime' even if it was Nikki Haley. And that missing airplane, when you asked if a black hole could have sucked it up? I'll be honest with you here, Don, I almost dropped you. But I went along with the Cybertruck and the massages and everything from Elon because, you know me, I always shoot for the moon for you. But sometimes you miss. So you're done at Twitter. You're done at CNN. NBC would rather get herpes than have you back. So hear me out on this one. There's a weekend weatherman spot open at WVTM in Birmingham and I suggest you take it before they change their minds."
All kidding aside, there's just too much money in TV "news" now. There were always big egos involved, but the combination of big money, oversized egos, midding IQs, and low journalistic standards has proven toxic.
I'm not sure how Lemon ever showed up on Musk's radar, but Musk was right when he said that Lemon's approach "was basically just ‘CNN, but on social media,’ which doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that CNN is dying."
We've known network news was dying for 20 years, starting with Rathergate. The company where I've worked for almost 20 years, PJ Media, was founded to fight this televised dumpster fire. That CNN, CBS, and all the rest of the network news outlets are still in business — even if mere shadows of their former selves — is a testament to the power of inertia.
You can't blame Lemon for shooting for the moon, but it's fair to ask why an obvious mediocrity had cause to think he might get it.
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