A little over a month ago, the Spectator’s Amber Athey posted a tweet mocking Kamala Harris’s State of the Union outfit:
Kamala looks like a UPS employee — what can brown do for you? Nothing good, apparently.
— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) March 2, 2022
As Athey details in The Spectator today, the tweet was “a UPS joke, featuring the company’s now retired slogan,” referencing the fact that “Harris wore a chocolate brown business suit that was panned on social media — some users compared her to a Hershey’s chocolate bar, while others wondered why she wore the same color as her chair.”
But after a backlash instigated by left-wing activists, Athey was unceremoniously terminated from her position at WMAL, an ostensibly conservative radio station that hosts nationally syndicated voices on the right such as Dan Bongino, Mark Levin, and Ben Shapiro. Athey explained the series of events in her Spectator piece:
I was officially hired at WMAL, which is owned by Cumulus Media, this past fall as one of three female co-hosts of O’Connor & Company, the morning drive radio program.
On March 9, I co-hosted the show alongside my friend Larry O’Connor, just like I normally do on Wednesday mornings. It had been nearly a week since the social media meltdown over my Kamala tweet, and none of us at the show had a feeling that anything was amiss.
Later that afternoon, just before 4 p.m., I received a call out of the blue from Jeff Boden, the vice president of Cumulus Washington, D.C, and Kriston Fancellas, the vice president of Human Resources.
They told me that the tweet I sent about Kamala was “racist” and that subsequent follow-ups defending myself and making fun of the efforts to cancel me were unacceptable. I had violated the company’s social media policy, they said, and I was terminated effective immediately.
They did not have the courtesy to offer me an opportunity to defend myself, nor did they speak to anyone at the program before handing down their decision.
Despite multiple appeals, during which company officials admitted that the perception of racism was more important than whether or not my tweet was actually racist, the company has refused to reverse its decision. Meanwhile, my image and bio is still being used on the WMAL website and social media channels to promote their programming. I am racist enough not to be paid, but not so racist that my likeness cannot be affiliated with the station, apparently.
The cowardly move would be shameful if it had been undertaken by any institution — but it is made all the worse by the fact that WMAL is supposed to be a conservative station, and presumably caters to a primarily conservative listener base. “This incident has destroyed the integrity and reputation of WMAL and Cumulus as hosts of conservative content,” Athey writes. “We spoke frequently about the dangers of censorship and cancel culture on our program, and yet here they are bowing to the mob. If I can be fired for making fun of the vice president’s outfit, every single host on a Cumulus station is in danger of losing their job at a moment’s notice. Political commentary is worthless if it can’t be used to speak truth to those in power without fear of professional consequences.”
Amen.