“You’re fired!” was the Washington Post’s message to Racial Grievance Columnist* Karen Attiah following a series of “unacceptable” social media posts regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Here’s one of them:
The Washington Post ladies and gentlemen. https://t.co/ogDsfnsNcc pic.twitter.com/yH3auXWntw
— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) September 11, 2025
Saucy, but I wouldn’t have fired her over it. When you hire someone for their race-baiting skills, posts like that one are just getting what you paid for.
The Washington Post has yet to release a statement.
*Not her actual title. But it should have been.
This might be the BlueSky post that got her fired: “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot.” Attiah attributed that quote to Kirk, but that’s not what he said. Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey has Kirk’s full quote — and a deep dive into how Attiah altered it to suit her purposes — but that’s not what I want to get into today.
I’d like to discuss performative victimhood for fun and profit.
“As a columnist, I used my voice to defend freedom and democracy, challenge power and reflect on culture and politics with honesty and conviction,” Attiah wrote on Substack on Monday. “Now, I am the one being silenced — for doing my job.”
Spoiler: Attiah hasn’t been silenced; she just lost a cushy gig at a paper that’s had enough of her… you know.
My RedState colleague Bonchie took the words right off of my keyboard:
Karen Attiah, who was just fired from the WaPo for making up a Charlie Kirk quote, lobbied to get an editor fired for publishing an op-ed from Tom Cotton.
So no, I’m not interested in hearing free speech absolutist arguments from these people now that it’s convenient.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) September 15, 2025
On reading the news, my first thought was, “Maybe she should have taken the buyout.”
In case you’d forgotten, changes are underway at the Post under new Executive Editor Matt Murray. Owner Jeff Bezos apparently got tired of losing eight or nine figures on the paper every year, and named Murray to the job last year to drag the left-wing Democrat-party mouthpiece a bit closer to the center.
“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos wrote in a memo to staffers back in February, prompting Opinions Editor David Shipley to resign at once.
He also announced a buyout offer for Journolists™ and opinion writers unwilling to live up to the new standards. As of last month, “At least 60 Washington Post journalists, including some big names, are out,” after what the Washingtonian called “a rough year.”
Attiah was not among them — and it’s this writer’s opinion that she was looking to get fired.
Check out her X announcement:
Some news: I’ve been fired from the Washington Post.
But my work will continue anyway.https://t.co/bGcYOsQvlI pic.twitter.com/3btymavsQi
— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) September 15, 2025
“Karen Attiah would like you to know that she’s a victim and would you please look at her series of glamour shots,” Kimberly Ross quipped.
They tried to silence her — see the flower (!!!) ball-gag jammed in her mouth — but she still carries the Torch of Truth or Whatever! The torch in this case is a burning copy of the Washington Post because, of course, it is.
The scene appears so over-engineered that Rube Goldberg just took an Aleve.
When your entire schtick revolves around “resistance” and other classes of victimhood, it always helps when you can make yourself appear to be the victim. That’s why I’m reasonably certain that, instead of taking Bezos’s generous buyout offer, Attiah waited for an issue to come along, allowing her to gin up just the right kind of controversy to A) Get her fired, B) Re-establish her “Resist!” cred.
Lord knows that these days, she wouldn’t have to wait long.
Whatever the Post’s buyout offer was worth, it couldn’t be anything close to the value Attiah will squeeze out of today’s performative victimhood. This is a well-worn playbook for activist-journalists.
It’s a profitable grift, and nice work — if you can stomach it.
Recommended: Possible Kirk-Related Bomb on Fox News Van Fizzled, But That’s Not the Weird Part…
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