Washington Post Ordered to Rehire Columnist After Charlie Kirk Controversy

Ultimize. Uh-oh, it turns out the Washington Post made a boo-boo. They, according to arbitration, are going to have to rehire the columnist Karen Attia. In case you forgot about her situation, here's the situation. The Washington Post has to reinstate columnist Karen Attia with back pay, ruling that her post after Charlie Kirk's assassination did not constitute gross misconduct and that the newspaper lacks sufficient cause to fire her. So here's what she actually wrote. You remember this huge brouhaha last year? Charlie Kirk unfortunately assassinated. No one's in favor of assassination, but there was sort of this mania in the country, this hysteria, where for a while if anyone mentioned this guy's named Charlie Kirk and didn't instantly surround 2 minutes before and 2 minutes after with unmitigated praise, they were treated as if they were terrorists and they were losing their jobs and getting terrorized out of polite society. So this is essentially what happened to this columnist. So here's what she wrote. Part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness, and absolution for white men who espouse hatred and violence. Nothing in there even mentioning Charlie Kirk's name. Nothing advocating or celebrating his violence. There was an additional quote that got her in trouble. Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is Not the same as violence. Well, that sounds like crazy talk, doesn't it? Yeah, that's really crazy talk. Now, those of you a little bit older will likely not remember that when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, I didn't see prominent conservatives crying and going boo-hoo-hoo-hoo. No, that's not what they were doing. We live in a culture, ladies and gentlemen, where let's just say how we mourn the deaths of certain famous people isn't exactly equal at all. So let me give you some examples. Again, we are told that because someone is dead and was assassinated, we're not allowed to criticize them. That's what J.D. Vance said. That's what Donald Trump said. That's what the whole conservative establishment said. Here's what Charlie Kirk said about Martin Luther King Jr., someone else assassinated. MLK was awful. He's not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn't believe. Somehow Charlie Kirk wasn't canceled for that. So what's really going on here? What's, what's really going on in America? And I'll grant you, it's not as bad now. But Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and Tucker Carlson and Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, and all the prominent conservatives got together after Charlie Kirk was murdered. And I'm not suggesting they were in on it. No, we're not playing that game here. But they got together and said, all right, gang, this is our opportunity. We can exploit Charlie Kirk's death to our own benefit. So let's play this whole political correctness game, but let's make it conservative political correctness. Let's make it DEI for conservatives. For decades, we've been talking about what fragile snowflakes liberals are and progressives are. Let's do a satire of that. Let's now act like conservatives are such snowflakes that if they hear one teeny tiny critical word, word about Charlie Kirk, they'll just melt. They'll fall apart. They'll just disintegrate. Their lives will be over if they hear any criticism whatsoever about one of ours. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to launch a campaign to get everyone fired, every columnist, every associate professor of sociology at the University of South Georgia Community College. We're going to get them all fired. We're going to terrorize them. We're going to convince them that this is America, the land of the free, brave, of free speech, and free— you can say anything you want as long as all of your criticism starts in the center of the political spectrum and goes left. So yes, criticize Barack Obama, call him a socialist. Yes, criticize Joe Biden and say he's worse than Fidel. Criticize, criticize, criticize. But the second you veer one inch to the right, anyone on our team will know that's the end of the world. That is the end of your career. That's the end of your paycheck. If you had a tenured position somewhere, if you were a prominent Forget about it. Time to live off government cheese and go down and live by the river in a rented U-Haul or some sort of camper. That's what your life should be if you criticize any prominent conservative. Doesn't matter how filled with bile their entire world of commentary. That's okay. The problem is if we do any kind of criticism of a conservative. Now, here's a prominent conservative no longer with us. This is where— here's what Pat Robertson, how he gently and had civil discourse. He said the feminist agenda encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians. That's considered civil discourse. He didn't lose any money from that. He didn't lose his status as a Republican Party poohbah. That was considered perfectly okay. So I can just imagine the conversations going on at the Washington Post. What do we do now? What do we tell Jeff Bezos? He doesn't want to hear about this. He doesn't want to credit— he doesn't want to be seen as doing anything that makes Donald Trump upset. Yes, Donald. No taxes. No taxes on Amazon. We'll do anything. Anything. If I have to fire every— if I have to shut down the Washington Post, dear president, do it. They don't want to have that conversation with Jeff Bezos. And yet this is not— this is arbitration. Typically arbitration sticks. Gets really, really unwieldy and expensive quickly if you try to fight arbitration. But that's the latest. The Washington Post ordered to fire back the— to hire back this columnist who said things that by any stretch were not inflammatory. I've yet to see somebody say, wow, I really endorse the fact that Charlie Kirk was assassinated. I don't say that. I'm not endorsing it. I think it was awful. But in this world of political correctness for conservatives, this world of DEI for conservatives that we've now entered, their feelings are so soft and tender. Anything other than unmitigated praise. is considered an assault on the core fabric of the United States. It's considered beyond the pale. It's considered an act of terrorism. And looks like this time, at least, someone with a little sanity is fighting back. Now, what's going to happen to the Washington Post? I mean, Jeff Bezos is so insanely rich, and the Washington Post is basically like you or me finding 2 pennies on the walk to the local grocery store. Yeah, technically it's money. Is it worth our time bending down to pick it up? It might be germy. It has no impact on our ability to buy anything we want. Maybe you just walk away from it. I think there's a good chance Jeff Bezos simply shuts down the Washington Post rather than hire back this columnist because it might hurt Donald Trump's feelings. And one thing we know about Jeff Bezos, he doesn't want to hurt Donald Trump's feelings these days. Would you like to be the sort of successful person who is dominating news, at least in your industry? Well, if so, it's time to up your skills. At ultimize.com, I've created online courses to help you do that. Now, here's the thing. No obligation. You can get a free course on communication skills, a free course on how to build better habits. All you have to do is go to ultimize.com. That's ultimize.com. No obligation. Go there now. Issue 2. Big news story in today's New York Times: young women at the Clare Boothe Luce Center are resisting a growing manosphere faction that questions women's intelligence and careers while trying to combine conservative politics, motherhood, marriage, and professional ambition. Okay, I, I— you gotta love these conservative women who want big outspoken careers and want to conserve Traditional values. Might I remind you, women, that traditional values for women in most of the world, even today, you don't get to vote. You shut up and cook. So this idea that you're in favor of traditional values and you're a woman, I don't get, especially if you want to go out and loudly advocate for that when you're— the traditional values Shut up. The tradition in the United States was you don't get to vote. The tradition in much of the world today, women, shut up, keep a veil on your face. If traditional values are always good. So here's what this conference at the Clara Booth Luce Center revealed. So there were 13 paid interns there, professional conservative Young women. One of the lawyers asked, women should be lawyers? He was genuinely confused about this. Many of the young conservative women are saying that surprisingly, shockingly, the conservative men they know like Andrew Tate and all that that implies. So here's what I think. liberal women should do. This may be a little counter to your thinking, but if liberal women, progressive women actually want to raise liberal, progressive, intelligent young women, they should say, be like a conservative. And by that, I mean, look at the conservative icon. Look at Phyllis Schlafly. Phyllis Schlafly, if you're not familiar with her, was the woman who essentially killed the Equal Rights Amendment. In the United States, she was this woman with the Aunt Bee hairdo strutting around the country, advocating to vote down on the Equal Rights Amendment because nothing could be worse in her view than women having equal rights. And she gleefully, gleefully started all of her presentations to say, "I want to thank my husband for letting me come today." So while he's taking care of the kids, okay. Little background on Phyllis Schlafly. She has a Harvard Law degree from way back in 1945. She raised 6 children, or her husband raised 6 children, we should say. She identified as a homemaker. Yeah, right. She ran for Congress twice, founded the Eagle Forum, which was this huge giant. Imagine a Turning Point USA, but decades ago. She spoke at every kind of political convention imaginable. She published 26 books, wrote a syndicated column. She was absolutely everywhere, died politically active at 92. Now, I could just imagine the conversations she has at her house at breakfast. Her husband says, Phyllis, you know, I'm trying to get out of the house today to go down and run a few— You're not going anywhere, buddy. I've got that. I'm going to be on CBS News today. You're going to take care of these 6 kids. You're going to feed them. You're going to change the diapers. You're going to take them to school. I don't want to hear anything about you. Yeah, yeah. But, but Phyllis, I was really hoping to go see, you know, have a lunch appointment today. My best friend, I haven't seen him in 6 years. Who's bringing home the bacon? Who's publishing 6 books, darling? Me or you? I didn't think so. So here's the thing. Here's your to-do list. Here's your honey-do list. And when you're all done, I've got a few interviews for you with the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and you're going to tell them what I told you to say. You're going to tell them how I ask you each day, honey, is it okay if I can go out and campaign today? And you let me. You got it, husband. That's how I imagine the conversations at Phyllis Schlafly's breakfast table every day. Because I defy any liberal or left-wing or progressive mom out there to point to someone who could be a better role model for their daughter than someone like Phyllis Schlafly. Educated, politically active, speaking, media interviews, publishing 26 books. She basically was the, the ultimate emblem Of feminism. Now, she had no clue about this. Obviously, she wouldn't recognize that, but she's always saying, oh, Fred let me. Fred didn't let you do anything. I guarantee you, if Fred hadn't said yes, ma'am to every single thing you'd ever requested, uh, you would have got— you would have eaten his head. You would probably eaten him alive. Philly Schlafly was a tough, tough cookie. And yeah, a good role model, a good role model. Also in the news today, food stamps for soda restrictions. There's some analysis going on there. Early research indicates that state restrictions on purchasing soda with SNAP benefits produce a modest initial decline in soda purchases. Although researchers do not yet know whether the effect will last or improve overall health. Okay, so here's the background. We have food stamps for people. There was bipartisan support for this when it was initiated, but it's become a whipping boy among conservatives. Like to talk about waste, fraud, and abuse in our American government, even though all of our Money goes to Social Security and Medicare and the defense, and everything else is a tiny crumb. But we've been told again and again and again how wasteful, how fraudulent food stamps are. Those people aren't working on it. Why am I supporting that? Okay, that's the background. Now, 23 states asked the USDA for permission To stop allowing poor people to buy Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Mellow Yellow with their food stamps, and permission was granted to a number of states. So here's what happened: purchases fell 13% of what people were buying of soft drinks. Water stayed the same. Again, I don't know why anyone would ever buy water unless you live in a country where. The water supply is has been proven to be polluted. Other than Flint, Michigan, that's not the case in the United States. The biggest thing that changed was people buying these 40-ounce drinks. So here's what we know about sugar: it's bad for you. So I'm trying to figure out the conversation. You've got a liberal legislator and a conservative legislator behind closed doors battling this out. And the conservative is saying, you know, my people don't want to pay our tax dollars to help these poor people buy sodas and Pepsis and Cokes because it's waste. They don't need that. And the liberal is saying, yeah, but it might cause stigma. It might make somebody feel bad. It might make a mom or a dad of a poor person feel bad if they can't buy Coca-Cola and other sugary drinks. And they go back and forth and back and forth. It might stigmatize the kid if little Timmy didn't have a Coca-Cola in his lunchbox at lunchtime. Okay. I'm not in favor of making anyone feel bad or stigmatizing anyone for feeling poor. I'm really not in favor of that. But you know what else is a stigma? Being obese. And sodas, soda pops, sugary drinks are a huge, huge factor in creating obesity. I'm not in favor of anyone being stigmatized because they're walking around with a peg leg like a pirate from 1842. But when you get diabetes at age 36 because all you ever did was drink sugar water and cheesecake and Little Debbie's snacks, and your leg's amputated, and you're walking around with a peg leg, people might laugh at you. And make fun of you. Not advocating it, but that's stigma too. So anything we can do to reduce stigma, I'm in favor of. But let's, let's take the low-hanging fruit. And the low-hanging fruit is, why don't we do everything we can to encourage people not to drink sugar, not to consume tons and tons and tons of sugar? Here's what we know from a health perspective. The following is a list of everything horrible that can happen to you if you don't drink sugar. That's right. If you're listening on the podcast, that was dead silence. Nothing bad can happen to you if you don't drink sugar. If you live in the United States and you're not getting in a time capsule going back to Flint, Michigan from 20 years ago, nothing bad will happen to you from drinking tap water. Will it occasionally have a little chlorine taste? No. But we do know. So if you're a liberal or a progressive and you're saying to yourself, you know, I'd really like to help poor people, I can't imagine anything you could do better than trying to stop that early addiction of consuming sugar water. Now, did I drink Coke as a kid? Yeah. Maybe that's why my hair's falling out. I don't know. But would I have been harmed in any way if in my household we did nothing but drink water? No, and that's why I don't buy soft drinks for my own household today. So am I perfect? No, but that's just an easy thing. That's an easy thing to do. Just don't buy sugar water. It's such an easy thing to do, and it literally saves life. So it's very rare in politics where you can make a decision where you save money and you save lives. Quite often it's one or the other, but not using government tax dollars to fund poison that kills people, that's a no-brainer. So this is, you know, people always try to peg me, oh, TJ, are you in this camp or this camp or this tribe or this tribe? This is one case where I think Democrats are out of their minds. This idea that it's somehow stigmatizing poor people if they can't ply their child with sugar water to give them the fast track to diabetes and obesity. No, the government should not be paying for soft drinks with SNAP benefits. Liver disease, cavities, Gout, diabetes, heart disease—all of these things happen more likely to happen with the consumption of sugar water. Okay, let's let's get out of that. We're going to pop off to my surprise question of the day. Those of you who are new to filtered, this is something we just started last week. I end each show with reading a question live. You can send these in, or I'm also having them supplied by our producer, just sort of get a fresh take on something. So here's the question of the day. TJ, you spent decades teaching people that effective communication requires discipline, preparation, and restraint, but your funniest comedy often appears when you abandon control. Well, I appreciate that. What's weird about the possibility that Coach TJ, the expert who made you successful, may now be the biggest obstacle preventing Comedian TJ from becoming great? So those of you who don't know, I am now doing stand-up comedy. And I'm doing open mics throughout New York City, throughout South Florida. And yes, this question is a fair question. I'll never forget my first open mic. The emcee is Ben Fishman. I'm at The Peach, an open mic comedy venue here in South Florida, and I do my first open mic, and the stand-up comedian emcee says, wow, TJ, that was really great. My heart gets pumping. I'm excited. I'm smiling. Slight pause. TJ, that was really great. For a TED Talk. It sounded like a TED Talk. Instant deflation. That is the worst thing an aspiring comedian could ever hear. So yeah, it is— it can be a problem. Now, it's not an excuse. There are many comedians— Anthony Jeselnik, for example, Jerry Seinfeld— where they refine and refine and refine every line, every word in a joke, and they deliver it Exactly the same way, even though they make it sound conversational and spontaneous. Comedy is a form of public speaking. It is. I would argue it's the hardest form because you're being judged not on whether you're interesting, not on whether you're delivering a useful idea, which is all most people ever get judged on when they're doing any kind of public speaking. They're judged by, did you make me laugh in the last 10 seconds? You can have great stagecraft, great eye contact, excellent confidence, have interesting provocative ideas. You don't get people to laugh, you're gone. You're boring. You're not going to get hired anywhere. You're not going to build an audience. So that's the big difference between public speaking and stand-up comedy. So yeah, I'm trying to essentially unshackle myself from professional smooth TJ, one of the things I've honed over the 40 years of doing public speaking training and media training is the ability to think on my feet and make everything smooth. There's never any awkward pauses. I pause, but there's never any awkward pause. But with comedy, that's horrible. If you finish a thought and quickly explain it and understand it, you destroy the humor. You don't give anyone time to laugh. You've destroyed the mystery out of it. So there's a very, very different structure of how you can speak as a comedian versus how you speak as a business executive or public speaking expert or personal development guru. So yeah, I would rate my skills as a professional speaker way up here. If this is the bottom for stand-up comedy, I'm maybe a foot or two below the bottom. I'm still working to bust through the ground and get up to some level of competence, but I'm not there yet. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. Thanks for joining me. See you tomorrow. Ultimize.