The Washington Post Fires Its Last Black Opinion Columnist For Directly Quoting A Bigot
from the democracy-dies-under-bright-halogen-lights dept
The Washington Post isn’t what it used to be. While the paper is still peppered with a few decent journalists trying to do good work, the outlet is being slowly strangled to death by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, who is steadily dismantling the last vestiges of the paper’s sagging credibility in a desperate bid to mislead the public and pay homage to our mad, idiot king.
This week the paper fired its last black opinion columnist for directly quoting Charlie Kirk, a man paid by right wing billionaires to create short-form video internet propaganda where he tricks dull children into believing that minorities are inferior human beings.
Karen Attiah, WAPO’s founding Global Opinions editor, took to Bluesky to say that WAPO management fired her for “gross misconduct.” Her offense? Standing up for her own civil rights in the age of U.S. authoritarianism:
Attiah explains what happened here. Her offense, according to a letter sent by Post leadership obtained by Oliver Darcy, was “unacceptable Bluesky posts” that criticized “white men,” including this one that simply quoted Kirk’s own words:
The Washington Post has always had a backward and ignorant policy that tries to prevent its employees from expressing human opinions. But its worth noting that this dated relic has never applied to opinion columnists specifically hired to express their opinions. That’s before you even get to the fact that “I should be allowed to exist without being threatened by hateful bigots” isn’t an opinion.
It’s clear Attiah, who hired murdered columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2017 and was central in shaping the former WAPO’s opinion pages, was fired for the modern cardinal sin of upsetting thin-skinned Republicans and rich white authoritarian-earlobe-nibbling billionaires.
Attiah’s firing comes amidst a backdrop of “free speech loving” MAGA authoritarians desperately trying to cancel anybody who didn’t engage in a distorted hagiography of Kirk and his work (which was, again, helping rich people spread hateful and divisive internet propaganda among children to divide the electorate and normalize ignorance and racism, all under the flimsy cover of “Christian values”).
Like so many U.S. billionaire-owned major media outlets, the Post has responded to authoritarianism with the ethical equivalent of a wet farting sound. It’s painfully demonstrated the failures of consolidated corporate media, where ownership interest in tax breaks, deregulation, and rubber-stamped merger approvals trumps any interest in objective truth or educating America’s increasingly befuddled electorate.
The extraction class wants the public fighting amongst themselves about issues like race and candy gender; they certainly don’t want an informed electorate supporting things like making billionaires pay their fucking taxes. So all of our billionaire media owners (also see: the LA Times) are desperately trying to reshape reality and blunt the public backlash to their abhorrent, self-serving behaviors.
So under the leadership of former Rupert Murdoch lackey William Lewis, the Post has increasingly become a safe space for authoritarian zealots. That’s included not just journalism that’s softer on far right-wing ideology, but firing cartoonists who criticize Jeff Bezos. It has also involved retooling its opinion pages so everyone is super nice to corporations, billionaires, and authoritarian assholes.
The collapse of major U.S. media institutions and repurposing of many of them as propaganda (see: CBS) very closely follows the authoritarian playbook in countries like Hungary. A functional press, healthy education system, and an informed electorate is an existential threat to rich right-wing zealots with terrible, unpopular ideas, who want to strip the country for parts in peace.
But however rich Jeff Bezos may be, the market for billionaire ass kissing and authoritarian earlobe nibbling is minimal and already extremely saturated. The paper has not only been suffering a brain drain of decent journalists and columnists, it’s been heavily bleeding subscribers since election season. And the more Bezos tries to reshape reality and informed consensus, the bigger the backlash seems to get.
The death of mainstream corporate journalism at the hands of weird rich assholes does, one would hope, open the door to more independent journalism, worker-owned journalism outfits, and direct-to-consumer newsletters (though it’s ironic Attiah’s article on her firing is being hosted at Substack, a company run by people who openly courted white supremacists to goose engagement).
If it’s not yet clear, there’s a violent information war going on. And the folks who care about things like foundational ethics, informed consensus, and the public good are losing. Badly. Not giving our money, time, or attention to companies and billionaires keen on crushing democratic norms and basic human rights seems like the very least we can do.
Filed Under: authoritarians, bigotry, jeff bezos, journalism, karen attiah, media, racism
Companies: washington post
Comments on “The Washington Post Fires Its Last Black Opinion Columnist For Directly Quoting A Bigot”
Or, you know, we could get back into power and enact rules about speech to make this sort of thing less likely to occur.
Rules against calling for stochastic violence and rules about hate speech, perhaps similar to the ones in France and Singapore.
That would be a great idea.
Re:
Eh. No.
Re: First Amendment? What's that?
They’d have to pass Fist Amendment scrutiny. Somehow I doubt they’d pass that.
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Yes or no: Would you ban publication, ownership, or public readings of To Kill a Mockingbird in the United States because that book contains several uses of a racial slur that would undoubtedly qualify as “hate speech”?
And before you answer, please note that in Michigan, a bill has been introduced by a Republican lawmaker that would ban within the state of Michigan not only pornography, but any imagery—pornographic or otherwise—of transgender people. That is the kind of person you’re siding with when you side with censorship.
Re: Re:
As a librarian, I personally wouldn’t, but I do give a warning about “racist and possibly other outdated language” every time I have to publicly read a section of it.
Re: Re:
Here goes Stephen with his usual garbage Yes or No shit that ignores that we can write laws that have these magical things such as “nuance” and “context” baked into them.
The very existence of billionaires is a threat not only to democracy but to humanity itself. It’s crystal clear they’ll run over whoever and whatever is in the way of their massive and fragile egos including but not limited to the planet and our existence.
And because of centuries of slavery and general bigotry fueled mainly by european white people there’s a whole freaking lot of money concentrated in the hands of despicable white bigots.
This is a symptom of a very aggressive cancer that’s killing humanity.
Re: “Billionaires” are not the problem: Trumpists are the problem.
Billionaires like George Soros—whom Trump has threatened with RICO charges for funding nonprofits that organize mass protests against Trump, and whom Vance has accused of funding “terrorist sympathizers”, specifically with reference to Charlie Kirk?
Billionaires like Bill Gates—who harshly criticized Elon Musk’s destruction of USAID, after previously having met with Trump not to kiss his ring, but to advocate for USAID?
I gag as I write this. I never liked Soros—and since I’m old enough to remember the Halloween Papers, etc., I’ve always strongly disliked Gates. Trump 2.0 has caused me mental whiplash as it routinely forces me into sympathy, or at least alignment with people whom I previously disliked. Yet it is the truth.
Off the cuff, I have thus provided two clear counterexamples to your simplistic proposition that “billionaires” are the problem—and even a symptom of a “cancer”. I could surely provide more, if it were worth the research effort—but two should suffice.
Ultimately, your statement that “[t]he very existence of billionaires is a threat not only to democracy but to humanity itself” is no different in substance than cliché right-wing fearmongering over Soros orgs and Gates vaccine funding. Billionaires are human, too. 77 million Americans voted for Trump—each of them perceiving it to be in their own interest. So, too, the clique of pro-Trump billionaires.
(Notice: This message was written by a fully wetware human, using a computer running only free and open-source software; the latter includes an Xorg keyboard layout with fancy punctuation. Microsoft products have been banned from my home for many years. P.S., WTF, Techdirt account registration requires Google reCAPTCHA to invade my privacy and enslave me to train Google AI; no way! P.P.S., this is my second post attempt after my initial try vanished with no user feedback. I protect my privacy. If I am therefore silently prohibited from commenting by an overzealous and very rude filter, it is destroying free and open discussion on the Web.)
Re: Re:
Damn, that’s a lot of words to kiss billionaire ass. Do you know that trickle-down economics is a load of bullshit?
Re: Re: Re: Empty insults and strawmen do not enhance the quality of discourse.
Your beautiful Comment is the GREATEST ARGUMENT EVER MADE!
(Alas, I’d thought that anti-intellectualism, illiteracy, and emotionalist insults in disregard of facts were supposed to be the hallmarks of Trumpism.)
Where did I mention “trickle-down economics”, whether expressly or by implication?
Re: Re:
Yeah, no, billionaires, or the extraction class, or “billionairism”, is exactly the problem. It’s been a problem. Slavers, robber barons, and the modern billionaire class are a continuous threat to humanity. (Smoke that, existential threat-ists.)
Ultimately, your statement that “[t]he very existence of billionaires is a threat not only to democracy but to humanity itself” is no different in substance than cliché right-wing fearmongering over Soros orgs and Gates vaccine funding.
No, that is utter nonsense, complete bullshit, or both.
[Be aware that it can take ages for a comment to post. Or possibly never! It’s the joy of techdirt’s (now hardly new) transition to “a better platform”.]
[reCAPTCHA what now?]
Re: Re: Re: technology marches forward, or maybe not
It has been a while, preview and flag still do not work without javascript. They worked on the old platform.
Re: Re:
The fact that you have to rely on a billionaire deciding to be good is itself the problem. The thing that makes billionaires a systemic problem is that they have so much power to shape things to their personal whims. It’s the same reason dictators are bad even though you might be able to in theory name a single benevolent dictator.
(Never mind that Gates is himself really fucking awful. The fact that they occasionally do good things does not make them good. Gates pushing for USAID is not surprising given his past history with philanthropy)
There are two big issues with billionaires: their disproportionate ability to influence things outside of a raw vote, due to their wealth, and their class interests. Both are significant distortions that shouldn’t exist.
That doesn’t mean normal people can’t screw up too, but neither of those things are good.
To a lesser degree, a third problem is how they’re created. The process of becoming a billionaire often strongly selects being an exploitive asshole.
Re: Re: Re:
To wit: Welfare, Social Security, and Medicaid all serve a function in our society. Billionaires don’t. Taxing billionaires into giving up even most of their wealth would better serve society than letting billionaires hoard their wealth.
No person has ever done enough labor to earn a billion dollars; such wealth is only acquired through immoral means. Billionaires exist because of both the exploitation of the poor and the failures of government policy to limit that exploitation (including the failure to tax billionaires who pay their employees so little that the state subsidizes their low pay through welfare programs such as SNAP).
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Re: Re: Re:2
Ah yes, the classic spooky exploitation at a distance combined with the utterly braindead ‘fixed universal fair price’ economics that concludes that if you have made any profit at all from a financial transaction over any period of time that you have exploited others. Where if you buy something for $50 and the price goes up to $60 unexpectedly, you have retroactively robbed the seller. How is that for a mindfuck? Leftism, not even once.
Re: Re: Re:3
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about
Re: Re:
Yes, as we all know, a few not-horrible counter-examples completely negate any general argument.
Do you also believe that because there are some republicans who don’t kiss Trump’s ass, the current US government is actually fine and dandy? Because if so, I have a bridge to sell you.
Billionaires are greedy and greed drives stupidity.
Have those billionaires not seen what happens to the oligarchs in Russia? Either they are totally subject to Putin’s whims or they fall out of a window.
An authoritarian government does not provide a society good for billionaires.
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They think they’re smarter than those other guys.
Re: Re:
‘Yes the leopard has eaten ever last one it’s supporters before me but my face will never be on the menu!’
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“I’m built different”
-Literally every oligarch before he ends up out a window
Re: Re: Re:2
I wish literally every oligarch ended up out a window.
To be expected…
…from the paper that fired an editor for printing an opinion piece.
No great surprise.
False Quote
The quote she posted is not the actual words that Charlie Kirk said.
Re:
And your proof?
Re: Re:
Here is what he actually said:
https://rumble.com/v2zt1nq-wray-the-wretched-ray-epps-socks-fox-white-house-cocaine-mystery-gaetz-seif.html?start=3221
Re:
Snopes says otherwise. You can quibble over the unbracketed replacement of “you” with “Black women” at the beginning of the quote, but the context and the vibe of the quote is represented accurately.
Y’all Kirk supporters seem almost afraid of people actually quoting him and his odious views. Seriously y’all are claiming—without evidence to back up said claims!—that any quote attributed to him is either “fake” or “taken out of context”, even when the quotes have been sourced from multiple news outlets (including conservative media outlets) or from videos of him speaking. What makes you so scared to own supporting him despite—or because of—his having said those things?
Re: Re: 'He was brilliant and has great arguments!' 'For what?' 'Oh, you know...'
What makes you so scared to own supporting him despite—or because of—his having said those things?
Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views
Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
Con: LOL no…no not those views
Me: So…deregulation?
Con: Haha no not those views either
Me: Which views, exactly?
Con: Oh, you know the ones
(All credit to Twitter user @ndrew_lawrence.)
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Re: Re:
Snopes is lying.
It literally has a clip (in a tweet) of him saying “YOU do not” and the caption in the tweet quotes him as saying “black women do not”.
The Tweet with clip is the only citation, the tweet is lying about clip, and snopes continued that lie, presumably on purpose. (unless they didn’t watch the clip, which would be really bad fact checking)
And now you, and Karl Bode are continuing that lie, probably because you find it politically convenient.
You should be ashamed but I’ve learned you just aren’t capable of that.
Re: Re: Re:
As I said:
And that holds true: Kirk was talking about specific Black women before making his remark, but the vibe of his remarks were that Black women like the four whom he was addressing “had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously”. Even if the tweet doesn’t quote him 100% correctly, the context and the vibe are represented with all due fairness.
Also:
Snopes quoted the video in the tweet embedded in that article, and the video itself comes from an episode of Charlie Kirk’s own podcast—a video to which Snopes links right before it quotes him verbatim. Telling a lie to accuse someone else of lying doesn’t help your already fragile credibility, son.
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i can’t understand how you defend your fav by claiming he didn’t say the things he said which are the things you like him for.
It’s pretty fucking stupid.
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Re: Re:
Because he literally didn’t say it.
Yes, there’s a snopes article lying about it too, which is real funny, cuz they include a clip of him…not saying it.
Also, y’know, we’re not the racist ones, that’s you guys.
The Kirk quote is grievous to a level that it seemed false to me. Taking a few moments to check if it was accurate or not leads me to believe its an altered quote.
Its taken from a clip where Kirk says the “do not have the brain processing power” in talking about a few specific black women, of course those that don’t share his politics; Justice Jackson being one of them. The quote is fabricated to make it look worse than it already was.
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The whole quote isn’t verbatim but I don’t think it misrepresents the quote. “You have to steal a white person’s slot” is verbatim, and you are misrepresenting the quote much more than Attiah did by ascribing the intent as only political.
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Re: Re:
The quote not being verbatim while being passed off as verbatim is misrepresentative.
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Let’s say she included the full context of his remarks. How would that change the general vibe of what he said when the “you” in the verbatim quote was specifically referring to Black women?
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You’re so willfully ignoring the point, that I can only assume you’re trying to normalize racism.
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It’s like you think we are aware of only tiny instances of Kirk’s speech, goals, and those of his fans. Many of us have (sadly) been aware of him for many years. Again, why try to whitewash (lol) the shit you actually believe in? Why hide, when you want the world subject to your true desires?
Just admit it.
…Azathrump?
Rather telling on yourself there WP execs
Exposing racist rhetoric by quoting a racist is being critical of white men now, talk about one hell of an own-goal in arguing that being racist is intrinsically tied to being a white man.
Substack…
While Substack may have hosted racists and white supremacists, they also host our #1 political truth teller and documentation, Professor Heather Cox Richardson, and staunch anti-Trumpian commentator Jay Kuo. They perhaps actually seem to believe in real free speech, a novel concept these days, I know.
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They still do, but they used to, too.
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Well, in the sense that the Supreme Court has ruled that money is speech, sure.
False. Not a direct quote
Techdirt screwed up here. That is NOT a direct quote. Kirk said nothing about “black women”.
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The context of the actual original quote indicates that he was talking about Black women, and the vibe of the quote is fairly represented even if you want to quibble about the change at the beginning of the sentence.
Re: Re:
No he wasn’t. Nowhere did he suggest that he was talking about all black women. Attiah should have been fired long ago for her bigoted racist comments.
Re: Re: Re:
He named four prominent and successful Black women as examples of Black women who, in his minds, lacked “the brain processing power” to get where they were without affirmative action—or, as he put it, by “steal[ing] a white person’s slot”. Never mind the fact that he seemed to believe white people are entitled to whatever “slot” he had in mind when he said that. The context in which he said what he said proves that even if he wasn’t talking about all Black women, he was talking about Black women who’ve benefitted from affirmative action.
Keep trying to defend his racist bullshit all you want, though. And while you’re at it, maybe you’d like to defend him saying he’d force a 10-year-old girl to give birth if she was made pregnant via rape.
Re: Re: Re:2
And since I just saw this: Here’s what Charlie Kirk was really all about.
I wouldn’t call what she put in quotation marks a quote. She put quotation marks around her paraphrase of what Charlie Kirk said and attributed the paraphrasing as a quotation. I’m a dimwit, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic idiot. But I do know the difference between quotation and paraphrasing.
Having said that, if anybody can find evidence that Charlie Kirk said those exact words, I will be happy to reaffirm my dimwit status.
Down vote me, y’all. Nobody wants to see truth anymore.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Re:
Her paraphrasing changed a single word (“you”) into two words (“Black women”) that, when taken in the full context of what he was saying before and after that specific sentence, was accurate to the vibe of his comments. Other than that one change (which one could argue should’ve been bracketed to convey the fact that she was paraphrasing him), every word she attributed to Charlie Kirk was something he actually said—and if you don’t believe me, try believing Snopes, which cites the original podcast from which the quote (and thus the paraphrase) was taken.
Seems like the people who venerate Charlie Kirk are afraid of seeing the truth, since they’re the ones running from, or trying to disprove the veracity of, quotes that are correctly attributed to Kirk.
Donald Trump cares less about you than he does about Charlie Kirk, and imitating him like a dumbass parrot to own the libs won’t make him any more likely to give a shit about you.