Are conservatives now engaging in cancel culture? We’re debating that in our newsroom and in our pages today. For other views, please check out Eliana Johnson: (Fire Them All); Matthew Continetti: (Progressive Cries of ‘Cancel Culture’ Are Overblown); and River Page: (His Wife Called Charlie Kirk a ‘Nazi.’ He Was Fired.) And weigh in with your views in the comments.
During my public cancellation at The New York Times in the summer of 2020, Washington Post editor Karen Attiah was all too happy to join the pile on. She came after my colleagues and me, because we had the temerity to publish a Republican senator in the paper’s opinion section. Now, I’m going to do my best to defend her.
I’m not going to defend her views, many of which I regard as indefensible, including her disgusting conduct after October 7, 2023. (More on that below.)
What I can defend is her right to hold these awful views—and to keep her job at the Post’s opinion desk, which she says she lost this past week because of her response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
On Wednesday, Attiah posted on Bluesky something that managed to be both callous and untrue. Here’s what she wrote, in response to Kirk’s assassination:
“ ‘Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot.’ —Charlie Kirk”
