Washington editor for The Spectator magazine Amber Athey says she was fired from her co-hosting gig at WMAL-FM over a tweet she posted last month joking about Vice President Kamala Harris’ outfit.
Athey announced Monday on Twitter that her absence on “O’Connor & Company” was not because she’s “sick or on vacation,” but because she was fired “for making a ‘racist’ joke about Kamala Harris’s SOTU outfit.”
Over the past two weeks, I have received a lot of questions about why I haven’t been on @WMALDC.
I was not sick or on vacation. @WMALDC @CumulusMedia fired me for making a “racist” joke about Kamala Harris’s SOTU outfit. https://t.co/kOV9mTLqIA
— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) April 4, 2022
The Daily Wire reached out to Cumulus Media for comment.
“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,” Athey recalled in an article for The Spectator. “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,” the conservative cracked via Twitter.
According to The Seattle Times, UPS used the slogan “What can brown do for you” until it was changed in 2010.
Kamala looks like a UPS employee — what can brown do for you? Nothing good, apparently.
— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) March 2, 2022
Athey said her tweet began being reported by Left-wing activists after she “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,” she wrote. “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.’”
Athey says she was contacted days later on March 9 by management and told her joke was “racist.”
“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,” Athey wrote. “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,” she added.
Athey and others at the station said that they appealed to management to reverse course, but were unsuccessful. Co-host Larry O’Connor even publicly posted about the company making the wrong decision.
“I have been fighting all month to get [Amber Athey] back on O’Connor and Company and I will continue to do whatever I can,” he posted to Twitter on Monday. “We assembled a great broadcast team. I still have hope that [Cumulus Media] will do the right thing.”
I have been fighting all month to get @amber_athey back on O’Connor and Company and I will continue to do whatever I can. We assembled a great broadcast team.
I still have hope that @CumulusMedia will do the right thing. pic.twitter.com/X8POy2hswD
— Larry O’Connor (@LarryOConnor) April 4, 2022
“Conservatives are done playing nice with companies that continuously put their boots on our necks,” Athey told The Daily Wire. “Whether it’s Disney, Nike, Coca-Cola, or Cumulus Media, we can no longer stand idly by and give our hard-earned money to people who hate us.”
The only solution, she said, is to fight back.
“I am sick and tired of conservatives apologizing to the left, staying quiet because they’re afraid of burning bridges, or complaining incessantly without taking action,” she wrote at The Spectator. “We will only defeat the left’s bad faith attempts at censorship if we fight back.”
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