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A conservative writer and commentator says she was fired from a radio job and accused of being racist after joking that a brown suit worn by Vice President Kamala Harris looked like a UPS uniform.
Amber Athey, the Washington editor for The Spectator magazine’s world edition, claimed she lost her regular spot on DC talk station WMAL after she referenced the delivery giant’s slogan in a tweet about Harris’ attire at the State of the Union address.
“Kamala looks like a UPS employee — what can brown do for you?” Athey’s March 1 tweet read. “Nothing good, apparently.”
According to Athey, who recounted her experience in a Spectator column, the tweet initially made no waves.
A few days later, however, Athey “spoke critically of protests in favor of ‘trans kids’ at the University of North Texas” — and, as she wrote, “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,’” she said.
Her employers at The Spectator “laughed at and promptly deleted the angry emails” and none of her colleagues at WMAL’s morning “O’Connor & Company” show acted as if anything was “amiss.”
But eight days after the tweet, Athey was contacted “out of the blue” by Jeff Boden, the vice president of station owner Cumulus Washington, and Human Resources VP Kriston Fancellas.
“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,” she recalled. “I had violated the company’s social media policy, they said, and I was terminated effective immediately.”
Athey insisted that her firing “has destroyed the integrity and reputation of WMAL and Cumulus as hosts of conservative content.”
“We spoke frequently [on the show] about the dangers of censorship and cancel culture on our program, and yet here they are bowing to the mob,” she wrote. “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.”
Athey’s former employer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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