As Twitchy just reported, the Washington Post has terminated Felicia Sonmez after she spent a week accusing her employer and some of her colleagues of making the newsroom a hostile work environment for a woman such as herself. It all began when the Post’s Dave Weigel retweeted a joke about women and then quickly thought better of it and undid it and apologized. He wasn’t fast enough, though, and was suspended without pay. In case you’re just walking in on this dumpster fire, here’s the joke:
Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.
— Cam Harless (@hamcarless) June 2, 2022
At her peak, Sonmez was tweeting pieces about “trauma in the newsroom” and sharing that the colleagues who were disparaging her were all white.
Christopher Rufo has written up a few lessons we can all learn from the Washington Post’s drama:
Lessons from the WaPo meltdown:
-The heart of wokeness is envy.
-The domain of wokeness is inter-elite competition.
-The incentives of wokeness lead the privileged to adopt victim identities.
-The results of wokeness are personal neuroticism and institutional dysfunction. pic.twitter.com/w2kQnZRKKh— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 9, 2022
Sonmez is a Harvard grad who, despite pedigree and expectation, failed to become a "star." So she adopted woke psychodrama as a career strategy, ruining a colleague with a dubious MeToo allegation, filing a baseless lawsuit against her employer, and casting blame at "white men."
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 9, 2022
Her problem is one of proportion. She overestimated her intersectional identity ("white woman") and miscalculated by publicly embarrassing her superiors (faux pas in elite institutions). If she had simply been more subtle, she'd still be at the Post.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 9, 2022
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The question now is whether WaPo management sees wokeness as a problem of kind or a problem of degree. Almost certainly the latter. The paper will continue to be a snake pit of identity politics, but will draw the line at public reputational damage. Taylor Lorenz beware.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 9, 2022
The interesting phenomenon here is the shift within elite institutions from rewarding archetypal masculine power strategies (direct bullying) to rewarding archetypal feminine power strategies (social-emotional manipulation). Sonmez's male ally exhibits this tendency perfectly. pic.twitter.com/EprJcfCBPl
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 9, 2022
There is another lesson here as well…
— J.D. Haltigan, PhD 🏒👨💻 (@JDHaltigan) June 9, 2022
Pathological empathy.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 9, 2022
Nailed it
— R. P. Farmer (@FarmerPill) June 9, 2022
https://twitter.com/AThornebrooke/status/1535018704114790400
All leftism is. An ideological religion based entirely on envy.
— Mullihouse (@mullihouse) June 9, 2022
Victimhood is the coin of the realm in Lib Land.
— David (@Q_E_D_avid) June 9, 2022
Well said, gonna put all that on a tshirt 👏🏻
— wokist (@wokist1) June 9, 2022
Woke HR departments will destroy your company.
— Duke & Duke Commodity (@Area_Resident) June 9, 2022
Democracy dies in wokeness
— Kel (@Kelly8numberz) June 9, 2022
She had already overdone it when some say she jumped the shark by trying to bring race into the issue. But as Rufo points out, being a white, female reporter in a high-profile position doesn’t convey many intersectionality points.
Related:
Felicia Sonmez is still waging war on the Washington Post and white colleagues whose criticisms have only worsened her ‘trauma’ https://t.co/c9Q9e0EBvz
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) June 9, 2022