The Atlantic fires writer for advocating on his podcast to hang people who've had abortions

After widespread uproar at The Atlantic for hiring—and subsequently defending—former National Review writer Kevin Williamson, Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg finally wisened up and fired him.

Over the course of his career, he’s written more than his fair share of offensive things, including racist and transphobic content. However, it’s Williamson’s belief that people who’ve had abortions should get hanged that garnered the most outrage. That belief was first captured in now-deleted tweets, but Media Matters uncovered that he repeated those same sentiments on his podcast.

However, as Williamson himself explained in a September 2014 episode of his National Review podcast, “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” he had no problem defending his view that he supported capital punishment for those who had an abortion and that what he “had in mind was hanging.” Notably, although Williamson did hedge saying that he was “kind of squishy on capital punishment in general” he was “absolutely willing to see abortion treated like regular homicide under the criminal code.”

Fortunately, that was too much for The Atlantic to defend. 

More from Goldberg’s memo: pic.twitter.com/gnTi9qpDZG

— Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) April 5, 2018

What are my feelings about this recent development?

Author and columnist at The Guardian Jessica Valenti sums it up well:

I still believe Williamson never should have been hired, but I'm so glad that @TheAtlantic is now taking this seriously. Most of all, I am very relieved for the women who work at the magazine.

— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) April 5, 2018

I, too, am relieved, but it’s hard to miss that his other hateful content seemed not harmful enough to keep him off their roster. Why is a history of writing sexist, racist and transphobic content acceptable? Why is advocating for hanging okay in a tweet—but serious when it’s in a podcast?

I probably know the answers to those questions, but I don’t want to know. The answers would depress me.