OPINION —
Tucker Carlson, a TV pundit fired by three networks, was ousted by Fox News for lying about the 2020 election. Once a top young conservative, he turned into a scowling talking head out for money. CNN’s Don Lemon morphed from a sloppy reporter into a sexist one. Both should take the advice of Bruce Lee, a Hong Kong and American martial artist and actor.
“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it,” Lee said.
Tucker molded himself after his fired colleague, Bill O’Reilly, and his co-worker Sean Hannity. Scaring people was in their DNA and accuracy often was not checked. Lemon struggled to find an audience: He was out of place on morning TV.
Carlson has been racist in some of his monologues, and sexist, too. His rhetoric has been negative toward the LGBTQ+ community. His words may have encouraged mass shooters to kill people. He was confronted, too: Carlson moved to a new home because several times he had protesters at his Washington, DC, home; once when his wife was alone.
Carlson does not make haste when it comes to insulting soldiers, yet he never served in the military. He criticized Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley by saying “Hard to believe that man wears a uniform … He’s not just a pig, he’s stupid.” Those comments came after Milley said troops should study critical race theory “to understand white rage” as seen on Jan. 6, 2021.
(Milley has been serving his country since Tucker Carlson was 11 years old.) Milley is right, an estimate of the 1,000 felony or misdemeanor convictions would show that the majority are white. Milley and I know that if you want to see “white rage” in America it is not hiding.
Lemon has done something I doubt Walter Cronkite or even Dan Rather have ever done on camera. Lemon denies it, but he was drunk in the eyes of TV viewers on a New Year’s Eve show. It was noticed when he provided backup vocals for a singer. He held a microphone in one hand and a drink in the other.
“It was Don Lemon yesterday; it was Whoopi Goldberg the day before. There will be somebody else tomorrow,” said GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley.
The day before that comment Lemon said that Haley “isn’t in her prime” and that a woman is “in her prime in her 20s, 30s or 40s.” He apologized once again for misspeaking, about a 51-year-old candidate with wide political experience.
In 2014, after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Lemon started to host a special nightly program that had conversations and analyses about the situation. Aviation experts gave direction and depth but that did not stop Lemon from saying, “Maybe they flew into the Bermuda Triangle.”
“The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil’s Triangle, is an urban legend,” noted public television’s NOVA. “It is focused on a loosely defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances.”
Lemon was mentioned in the Columbia Journalism Review in December 2014. Unfortunately, it was a negative as he was named to the Worst Journalism of 2014 list. Among his gaffes were an interview with a Bill Cosby accuser and his comments at a Ferguson, Mizzouri, protest that there was “obviously” marijuana there.
“As one of the most recognizable anchors at CNN, Don Lemon has helped lead the cable network’s coverage of the biggest stories of the year,” wrote CJR Fellow David Uberti. “Live television is exceedingly difficult to produce, of course, but Lemon’s gaffes this year offer a case study in how to choose words wisely or not.”
Lemon, however, has won three Emmys for local reporting and several other industry and academic honors.
The late Rush Limbaugh told many exaggerations and falsehoods. But his legacy looks better now for a simple reason: He knew who he was and didn’t pretend to be someone else. Even when he returned from a few weeks in a drug interdiction clinic, he insisted “Don’t worry, I have not turned into a softie.” And he never did.
Carlson comes from a wealthy family, went to the best schools from prep on and was on track to be a thoughtful mainstream conservative. Unlike Rush, Carlson does not claim he has “talent on loan from God.” But he does have great wealth from gullible viewers. Lemon does not study enough to be a consistently good anchor. The public rebukes the two broadcasters received this week may escape their memory — maybe even on purpose.
Greg Markley first moved to Lee County in 1996. He has master’s degrees in education and history. He taught politics as an adjunct in Georgia and Alabama. An award-winning writer in the Army and civilian life, he has contributed to The Observer for 12 years. gm.markley@charter.net