FLASHBACK: WaPo reporter sues paper for not assigning her to cover Kavanaugh matter.
Felicia Sommez is a reporter for the Washington Post — part of the Post’s stable of lefty journalists. She has contributed to some of the dishonest anti-Trump stories we’ve critiqued on Power Line. See here, for example.
Sommez has sued the Post and some of its editors for alleged discrimination and retaliation. Her core complaint is that she has not been assigned to cover stories about alleged sexual assault and harassment, including the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh.
A few years ago, Sommez herself alleged that she was sexually assaulted by a bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times while she was drunk. Later, she spoke publicly about her experience as a “survivor” of sexual assault.
As a result of her experience and her advocacy, the Post apparently barred her from covering such allegations by others. The Post’s theory, it seems, was that Sommez’s experience might affect her reporting or at least create the perception that her reporting was slanted.
Sommez says that as a result of missing out on these assignments, including the Kavanaugh story, her career has been harmed. In addition, she claims to have been “humiliated” to the point of suffering emotional distress and requiring therapy.
Also from last year: Journalists Are “Centering” Their “Trauma” Because It Enables Them To Acquire Power.
We can just take Sonmez at her word and grant that this professional adult journalist genuinely did undergo the debilitating trauma she described, vacant staring spells and all. It’s impossible to judge the precise veracity of these trauma-related claims anyway, given how inextricable they are with the interior mental state of the individual in question. So we’ll have to just accept that Sonmez being “attacked online,” as she put it, really did result in the kind of extraordinary psychological turmoil she says she experienced. (Here’s some additional background information on the other alleged sources of Sonmez’s trauma.) What can be judged, however — and what has to be judged given its rapidly increasing prominence in public life — is the wider impact of the rhetorical style used so adroitly by Sonmez. Because it very clearly gets results. Call it therapeutic trauma jargon.
And she’s still going strong today:
