CNN Sports Anchor Rips Don Geronimo for ‘Barbie’ Remark

CNN Sports anchor Rachel Nichols on Monday tore into sports radio host Michael Sorce, who goes by the name Don Geronimo on air.

Geronimo was recently fired for making sexist comments about WUSA-TV anchor Sharla McBride.

While speaking with co-host Crash Young at the Washington Commanders training camp last week, Geronimo made several offensive remarks about McBride’s appearance, including shouting, “Hi, Barbie girl,” as she walked past and telling Young, “I thought she was a cheerleader.”

Geronimo was fired by WBIG-FM on Sunday, according to The Washington Post. iHeartMedia is the parent company of WBIG-FM.

“After an internal review, Don Geronimo is no longer an employee of WBIG,” iHeartMedia’s D.C. Region President Aaron Hyland said in a statement to the Post. “We take matters of this nature very seriously, and this behavior does not align with our core values.”

On Monday night’s edition of CNN Tonight, Nichols said she was “really bummed” to hear about Geronimo’s comments.

“Aren’t we past this?” she asked, according to Mediaite. “Aren’t we done with this? Of course, we’re not. And that is always so disappointing.”

“You heard the way he talked about her, right?” she continued. “This wasn’t just some offhanded comment. This was very extensively demeaning her, talking about how she looked, that she’s tight, that she’s a chick, ‘I thought she was a cheerleader.’ This is a working journalist. This is a person who came to work that day. And this is what happened to her.”

Nichols went on to say that it’s “so frustrating” to hear the kind of remarks Geronimo made because “we ask women in TV … to look attractive.”

“You tell people you want to be TV-ready, you want to be presentable, and then you criticize her for looking attractive,” she said. “That is a tough position to put a woman in.”

“The irony is that the ‘Barbie’ movie that you refer to addresses this,” she continued. “There’s this great moment in the ‘Barbie’ movie where America Ferrera is saying that women are supposed to be — they’re supposed to look like this, but then are criticized if they do look like that. That is exactly what happened here.”

Growing up in the Washington, D.C., area, Nichols said she listened to Geronimo since before she was a teenager and has been called “sideline Barbie” during her time in sports television.

“He has a history of lewd comments about women,” she said. “And I think that’s part of the context that might be missing from some of the national stories here.”

“This wasn’t done in a vacuum,” she continued. “He wasn’t let go of his job in a vacuum. Not only does he have a personal history, but, more importantly, the team has a history that they’re battling with here.”