In an ironic twist, it appears that those gleefully dancing on the grave of recently assassinated Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk are learning that “consequence culture” — not to be confused with “cancel culture” — is alive and well in this country.
Now-former Washington Post opinions writer Karen Attiah published a Substack on Wednesday announcing that she had been fired from the outlet for speaking “out against hatred and violence in America.”
“Eleven years ago, I joined the Washington Post’s Opinions department with a simple goal: to use journalism in service of people,” Attiah wrote in the newsletter.
She continued: “I believed in using the pen to remember the forgotten, question power, shine light in darkness, and defend democracy. Early in my career, late Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt told me that opinion journalism is not just about writing the world as it is, but as it should be. He told me we should use our platform to do good. That has been my north star every day.”
Attiah then claimed that, now, “I am the one being silenced — for doing my job.”
She then shared a string of Bluesky social media posts chronicling some of her responses to Kirk’s assassination.
For the most part, those Bluesky posts involved Attiah lamenting the hard turn toward political violence that the country appears to be headed on.
Had she just posted that and nothing else, she would likely be in no trouble right now.
But she took things further — to a place that social media swiftly called her out on.
Was the Washington Post right to fire her?
“My only direct reference to Kirk was one post — his own words on record,” Attiah claimed, before showing the so-called Kirk quote she had used: “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to steal a white person’s slot.”
The problem with this claim, for Attiah at least, is that it’s just not true.
Conservative social media influencer Greg Price, for instance, immediately latched onto that fabricated quote and helped provide the context of what Kirk had actually said:
Fired Washington Post columnist @KarenAttiah: “My only direct reference to Kirk was his own words on record.”
Except, what she claims to be a direct quote is not even remotely close to being true. https://t.co/oKgINoAMsG pic.twitter.com/MEAmDkSTfJ
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 15, 2025
Kirk was, in fact, talking about a host of public black women, such as Michelle Obama, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and former Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who had all intimated that they were beneficiaries of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and how in years past that assertion would have been labeled racist.
In other words, Attiah’s use of Kirk’s “words on record” was just flat-out wrong.
Alas, it wasn’t just the factual inconsistency that social media took issue with. Many found Attiah’s defiant and angry response to her firing to be a problem in and of itself.
Potential employers, take note: Tiki Torch Karen will take glamor shots of herself lighting your newspaper on fire if you don’t continue to employ her. A narcissistic, hateful person. Not worth hiring, even as part of your DEI program.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) September 15, 2025
“Potential employers, take note: Tiki Torch Karen will take glamor shots of herself lighting your newspaper on fire if you don’t continue to employ her,” activist Christopher Rufo wrote in response to Attiah. “A narcissistic, hateful person. Not worth hiring, even as part of your DEI program.”
One X user, however, perhaps best summed up the anger being directed at Attiah in response to her response.
“It’s astounding that in your article you can’t bring yourself to admit the obvious: you were fired for lying, fabricating a racist quote out of thin air and pinning it on Charlie Kirk,” the user wrote under Attiah’s post. “And so your pitiful career ends exactly as it began: a fraud, a DEI propagandist propped up by affirmative action, exposed at last for what you always were.”
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