Conservative commentator and now former radio host Amber Athey of The Spectator was fired from her radio gig by Cumulus Media after outcry from a supposedly racist joke told about Vice President Kamala Harris's outfit at the State of the Union.
Remember when at Biden's address Kamala came out wearing this... unique all-brown outfit to the event?
Well, that outfit was strange and LOTS of people made jokes about it on Twitter, including Amber Athey. But the Twitter mobs took exception to Athey's joke and pressured Cumulus Media into firing her.
Yeah, a joke about how Kamala's outfit looked like a UPS worker warranted Athey being canned from the radio show she co-hosts.
Athey tells the whole story in her own words over at The Spectator:
About a month ago today, I posted a tweet during the State of the Union address poking fun at Vice President Kamala Harris's outfit. 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. I went for a UPS joke, featuring the company's now retired slogan:
"Kamala looks like a UPS employee — what can brown do for you? Nothing good, apparently."
Here's the original tweet that caused the firestorm:
Kamala, who wore all brown, looked like a UPS delivery driver. That's the whole joke. Athey then commented that VP Harris is a completely awful VP. Also a completely non-controversial statement.
And for this, she was fired.
The State of the Union came and went, no one cared about the tweet. But then radical campus activists took the tweet out of context and tried to use it to cancel Athey:
No one had a problem with the tweet until a few days later, when I spoke critically of protests in favor of "trans kids" at the University of North Texas. A group of maniacal left-wing activists who want to chemically castrate children in the name of "gender affirmation" came after me. All of a sudden, the Kamala tweet was being re-framed as racist and dozens of Twitter accounts were bragging about contacting my employers about my "bigotry."
I have written about these dishonest smear campaigns in the past. The people who engage in them do not actually care about stamping out racism, or transphobia, or whatever. They only use those labels because they know they are powerful tools for silencing their opponents.
Wow, radical leftists are sometimes vicious liars? Who could have seen that.
Obviously not the higher-ups at Cumulus Media who caved to the woke pressure.
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.
It is absolutely ridiculous that a company like Cumulus could come to this decision without talking to Athey. She wasn't allowed to explain or defend herself and they simply let her go.
The threat of being labeled racist is still a powerful force. Even for a company like Cumulus which hosts many different conservative voices.
The left is fighting dirty. This is an example of cancel culture 101.
Fortunately, Athey still has her job at The Spectator. But if radical lefties had their way she'd be permanently out of the job market just because they dislike her politics.
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