The complicated tragedy of Don Lemon’s CNN implosion

[Daily Kos Morning Roundup]( A morning roundup of worthy pundit and news reads, brought to you by Daily Kos. [Click here to read the full web version.]( - [The complicated tragedy of Don Lemon’s CNN implosion]( The complicated tragedy of Don Lemon’s CNN implosion, Susana Morris, MSNBC Up until last year, there was a reason Lemon meant a lot to cable TV viewers and to Black viewers in particular. Lemon didn’t just bring the news. He also brought personality. Viral clips of him abound. A particularly hilarious one captures him bursting into laughter with guests Marc Lamont Hill and Angela Rye, much to the chagrin of stony-faced conservative pundit Paris Dennard, after Dennard suggested that a Black man wearing a red MAGA cap to The Cheesecake Factory “shouldn’t be verbally accosted.” And who can forget Lemon’s annual appearances at CNN’s New Year’s Eve celebration? Whether he was drunkenly recounting the state of his romantic life or getting his ears pierced on live television, Lemon was always must-see TV. This now-tarnished legacy was hard fought. Lemon was not afraid to connect to the news he reported. For example, when he revealed his own experiences with colorism growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he added texture to a news story about the insidious nature of internalized racism. Lemon tackled controversial topics head-on. In January 2018, then-President Donald Trump referred to African countries, Haiti and El Salvador as “s---hole countries.” Lemon, unlike other journalists who used equivocating language, said: “This is ‘CNN Tonight,’ I’m Don Lemon. The president of the United States is racist. A lot of us already knew that.” Lemon could be a contrarian at times. During President Barack Obama’s administration, he developed a reputation for sharply questioning guests and pundits who came to advocate for the nation’s first Black president. In some ways, this pivot from his previous, more congenial persona, was not always welcomed and was even viewed as opportunistic. But Lemon’s transition to a more hard-hitting interviewer who challenged guests from both sides of the aisle stood out, especially in a media landscape where partisan commentary is increasingly the norm. During the Trump years, Lemon pivoted once again, becoming bold in his criticism of racism. His response to Trump’s racist remarks on Black and Latino countries was an example of that change. It’s ironic that one of cable TV’s most reliable voices against racism was let go the same day as one of cable TV’s most reliable voices in support of racism. - [I Worked at CNN and Reported on Tucker Carlson. He Was Never Invincible.]( I Worked at CNN and Reported on Tucker Carlson. He Was Never Invincible., Brian Stelter, New York Times The Friday episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that turned out to be his last drew only about 2.6 million viewers — a measly 1 percent of the American adult population. But on Monday, the news of his firing was one of the top stories in the country. That’s because the power of cable news is in its reach and repetition, not its ratings. I learned this during my nearly nine years at CNN, where I anchored a weekly program about the media and reported on Mr. Carlson’s radicalization. The people who tuned in to his show at 8 o’clock sharp were only a subset of his total audience. When you count all the people who saw him on a TV at a bar or in an airport and all the people who watched a clip on the internet or heard radio talk-show hosts quote him, he had a monthly audience of surely tens of millions. Now multiply that reach by the dozens of other hosts on Fox News, and you can start to see the true influence of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Nielsen has a little-known metric for this, called cumulative viewership, and according to that measure, Fox News attracted more than 63 million viewers during the first three months of this year. Fox execs have pooh-poohed the cume data point, perhaps because the figure is bigger for CNN, closer to 68 million for the first quarter. But these metrics don’t fully account for the full digital reach of stars like Carlson and Lemon, either. - [Daily Kos is $48,823 away from our monthly goal. Can you chip in $5 now to help us close the books on April?]( - [Texas is first step in a national plan to install ‘chaplains’ in public schools instead of professional counselors]( Texas is first step in a national plan to install ‘chaplains’ in public schools instead of professional counselors, Mark Wingfield, Baptist News Global The Texas Legislature is considering House Bill 3614 and Senate Bill 763, which would allow Texas schools to hire chaplains to perform the work of school counselors but without any required certification, training or experience. [...] The House bill’s sponsor is Rep. Cole Hefner of Mount Pleasant, Texas. Hefner, the father of seven children, is a member of South Jefferson Baptist Church in Lindale. The Senate bill’s sponsor is Sen. Mayes Middleton of Galveston, a proponent of taxpayer-funded vouchers for private Christian schools. Both legislators are conservative Republicans. The exact language of the bill states: “A school district may employ a chaplain instead of a school counselor to perform the duties required of a school counselor under this title. A chaplain employed under this subsection is not required to be certified by the State Board for Educator Certification.” Currently, Texas law requires school counselors to pass a school counselor certification exam, to hold at least a 48-hour master’s degree in counseling from an accredited institution of higher education, and to have two creditable years of teaching experience as a classroom teacher. - [Joe Biden’s 2024 Opening Argument: It’s Me or the Abyss]( Joe Biden’s 2024 Opening Argument: It’s Me or the Abyss, John Cassidy, The New Yorker Biden’s calling card, the one that identifies himself as a Trump-slayer, and an upholder of normality and sanity, remains his biggest advantage going into 2024. He does have others, though. Inside the Democratic Party, he has proved an adroit coalition builder. Much as he’s an old-school, Irish-American politician and many of his closest political advisers are veteran, white operatives who hail from the moderate wing of the Party, he nevertheless recognized long ago that his party’s center of gravity has shifted, and his Administration has sought to bring on board Democrats who are younger, more diverse, and progressive. This approach is already evident in preparations for the 2024 campaign. On Tuesday, Biden also announced that Julie Chávez Rodríguez, a White House official who is the granddaughter of the labor leader Cesar Chavez, will be his campaign manager, and Quentin Fulks, a thirty-three-year-old Black political strategist, who managed Raphael Warnock’s Senate campaign in Georgia, will serve as principal deputy campaign manager. Though Biden didn’t dwell on the details of his policy record in his launch video, he has some substantial achievements to highlight. Under his leadership, the U.S. economy rebounded more quickly from the coronavirus pandemic than many of its competitors, and the unemployment rate is just 3.5 per cent. In the past year, Congress has enacted historic investments in green energy, electric vehicles, and semiconductor-chip manufacturing. As I pointed out last week, these initiatives are already paying off in announcements to build new factories and create new jobs, many of them in purple and red states. - [Show your support for progressive, independent news with a Daily Kos t-shirt—they're union decorated and made in the USA! Click here to get yours]( - [Who’s to Blame for a Million Deaths?]( Who’s to Blame for a Million Deaths?, David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times It was China’s fault, or Donald Trump’s, or the spring breakers in Daytona Beach or those selfish enough to travel home for Thanksgiving. It was those who forced essential workers to stay on the job and those who kept ordering delivery from them. It was the people who socialized in “pods” and those who weren’t strict enough about them. It was the Sturgis motorcycle rally in 2020. It was those who cut the line to get vaccinated, then those who didn’t get vaccinated, then those who stopped wearing masks once they did. It was conservatives who called Covid a disease of the elderly, and it was liberals who called it a terrifying, society-ordering risk. It was the governors who reopened and those who didn’t, and those who insisted that Omicron was mild and those who insisted it wasn’t. It was the teachers unions. It was the kid who infected the whole fourth grade. It was the parents who didn’t feel safe reopening classrooms at all. It was the people who didn’t bother to install air-filtration systems despite billions in federal funding and those who didn’t stage randomized control trials to measure the actual threat of transmission in schools. It was people who didn’t talk enough about long Covid and people who never talked about anything else. It was those undermining the vaccines and then those overlooking their shortcomings. It was mask holdouts, once we could no longer complain about mask mandates. It was the unvaccinated and it was Joe Biden saying “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” It was the C.D.C. revising its thresholds for local spread, then telling you it was safe to return to work after five days even without a negative test. And it was those people who kept annoyingly insisting that the pandemic wasn’t over, when, in truth, well, it both was and wasn’t. It was the virus, in the end, in ways hardly any of us were comfortable acknowledging. And so many, instead, pointed fingers at one another, whether we wanted more done or less. Perhaps out of a desperate need to believe that it was actually possible to defeat Covid-19, we chose to tell morality tales about pandemic response. - [How Much Do Voters Really Care About Biden’s Age?]( How Much Do Voters Really Care About Biden’s Age?, Ian Prasad Philbrick, The New York Times Americans often express concern about aging leaders, but that hasn’t stopped them from voting for older candidates. In a recent USA Today/Suffolk University survey, half of Americans said that the ideal age for a president was between 51 and 65. Another quarter said they preferred candidates to be 50 or younger. But five of the last eight presidential nominees, including Mr. Biden in 2020 and Donald J. Trump (twice), have been well over 65. In several cases, voters chose them over much younger primary opponents. And dozens of senators or representatives over 80 have been elected in the past century. Concerns over age are also more nuanced than they may first appear. While most voters favor age limits for politicians, they disagree over what that limit should be. Many voters also say older lawmakers bring valuable experience and shouldn’t be barred from serving if they remain in good health. That doesn’t mean Americans who say they’re concerned about age are lying. Their voting choices may reflect the available options. “There’s nothing inconsistent about people saying no one in their 80s should be president and then voting for someone in their 80s if that’s the only choice they’re given,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. ICYMI: Popular stories from the past week you won't want to miss: - [Fox was fine with Tucker's hate-filled lies. So what changed?]( - [Reactions pour in now that Tucker Carlson is out]( - [DeSantis flops in Japan and Trump looks more inevitable]( Want even more Daily Kos? 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