A high-profile UK newspaper columnist has been fired after she suggested Prince Harry and Meghan Markle should have named their newborn daughter “Georgina Floydina.”
The Sunday Telegraph’s Julie Burchill was accused of “disgusting racism” with her tweet about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s already controversial name for their baby, Lilibet Diana.
“What a missed opportunity. They could have called it Georgina Floydina!” Burchill tweeted, referencing George Floyd, the black man whose police murder in Minneapolis sparked protests across the world.
She then doubled down, according to The London Economic, saying that she “called the baby IT as a nod to non-binary bollocks” — and writing that the Sussexes’ baby’s first words would be, “Free Palestine!”
By Wednesday, her account had been removed — and Burchill fired from the right-wing paper.
“I’ve been sacked by the Telegraph – it’s been a lovely five years,” she wrote on Facebook on Tuesday, complaining at the paper “always rejecting my *edgy* column ideas.”
“Onwards and upwards!” she wrote, without apologizing for her tweets.
Omid Scobie, a journalist friend of Meghan Markle’s who authored an inside-story book about the couple, said that a spokesperson for The Telegraph confirmed that Burchill no longer works for the paper.
“A source confirms that she was fired following her racist tweets about the Sussexes’ second child (and refusal to apologize for them),” he wrote.
Burchill was not the only one punished over the racist Twitter exchange — a UK lawyer, Joanna Toch, was suspended by her law firm for her replies to the columnist, according to The Times of London.
“No Doria? Don’t black names matter?” she had asked the columnist, then suggesting the newborn should have been named “Doprah,” a mix of Markle’s black mother, Doria Ragland, and Oprah Winfrey.
The Family Law Cafe announced Monday that Toch had been suspended “with immediate effect pending an internal review into her recent comments on Twitter.”
The company “considers her comments as offensive, unacceptable and highly contradictory to the inclusive manner” of the company’s work, the statement said.
Columnist fired for suggesting 'Georgina Floydina' for royal baby name (nypost.com)
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