WaPo Wars: The Patriarchy Strikes Back

White men resurgent after Felicia Sonmez fiasco, women snubbed

Andrew Stiles • July 11, 2022 4:40 pm

The Washington Post‘s justified firing of obnoxious feminist reporter Felicia Sonmez has been quite the boon for generic male journalists. Last week the paper tapped generic white man David Shipley to take over as editor of the Post editorial page, and welcomed back Dave Weigel, the white male reporter who was suspended last month for retweeting a joke that offended Sonmez. The patriarchy is thriving.

Shipley’s hiring was widely viewed as a victory for misogynists. His predecessor, generic white man Fred Hiatt, died of heart failure in December 2021. Female journalists Ruth Marcus and Karen Tumulty had been running the editorial page on an interim basis. The Post‘s white male publisher, Fred Ryan, was naturally reluctant to promote a woman. They did not, he argued in a press release announcing the decision, possess Shipley’s “intellectual curiosity, thoughtful independence, journalistic integrity, and even-handed judgment,” among other traits commonly associated with the male gender.

In a statement announcing the hiring, Ryan claimed (without evidence) to have settled on Shipley after an “exhaustive” and “inclusive” search process that involved men and women “of diverse backgrounds, experiences, and worldviews.” Alas, the Post‘s blatant snubbing of two relatively qualified female journalists was reminiscent of CNN’s racist refusal to promote a person of color to replace Zoom masturbator Jeffrey Toobin as the network’s chief legal analyst. Toobin, who once tried to bribe his mistress to get an abortion, has appeared on CNN multiple times to discuss the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

The Post‘s open embrace of misogyny is ironic given that Sonmez initiated her job-ending tirade in response to Weigel’s retweet of a joke some described as “sexist.” The male journalist was suspended for a month without pay after Sonmez, a woman, complained. Nevertheless, she persisted in attacking her colleagues on social media until the Post was compelled to fire her for cause. Now that she’s gone, white men are finally getting a chance to run things.

Note: The Washington Free Beacon is proud to be a woman-led organization.