AG Bailey got his way and KC social media employee is out. What about real victims? | Opinion

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wanted blood and got it. The person responsible for a social media post who never should have named the city where Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker lives has been let go.

In an email sent to me Thursday, Jazzlyn Johnson, a spokesperson for Mayor Quinton Lucas wrote: “The employee has been separated from the City workforce for violation of City policy by posting outside the scope of authorized City communications. The City will have no further comment on the post or individual employees related to it.”

On its face, the post in question was harmless. The fact that it was made on the city’s official X account was irresponsible — but should such a foolish mistake lead to someone losing their job? Absolutely not.

I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of how Kansas City officials came to this decision. But I’d hate to think this is the world we live in now. A simple error in judgment that harmed no one should not be grounds for termination.

Now before Butker supporters come for my head on a platter, just know, I don’t condone what was written on X days after Butker’s controversial commencement speech at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. The city’s social media page isn’t an appropriate place for such tasteless posts.

But gimme a break. As The Star Editorial Board wrote previously, the Kansas City suburb Butker lives with his family is listed online. He wasn’t doxxed, as Bailey and others falsely claimed.

You know who was outed, though? Two female city employees whose names were wrongly leaked all over the internet. Neither had anything to do with the post, according to Lucas. One, an African-American woman, had her name, face and address plastered on social media. She was subjected to hateful and racist rhetoric unsuitable to reprint in a family newspaper.

Now that he got his way, I’d like to see Bailey condemn the mob that came after Kansas City employees with death threats. My guess is he won’t.

I find it rather ironic that our Republican AG wanted Lucas, a Democrat, to fire whoever was responsible for the post about Butker.

Instead of demanding Kansas City leaders terminate city employees, shouldn’t Bailey clean up his own house first? As this publication reported this week, attorneys with the AG’s office failed to redact from court documents the names, addresses and contact information of witnesses in a $23 million breaches of contract lawsuit filed against the state.

“When Bailey’s office submitted the court record this March as part of the appeals process, lawyers for HHS wrote that Bailey’s office ‘did not make a single redaction in the entire record,’ The Star’s Jonathan Shorman wrote in his report.

Where’s the outrage in these glaring omissions?

The same week Bailey embarked on his crusade to rid Kansas City of one of its social media account managers, I’d met with survivor advocate Amanda Householder and David Clohessy, former national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

They were in Kansas City for a press conference demanding Bailey do more to protect young people from abuse inside the state’s unlicensed boarding schools. One day before, the pair sought a meeting with Bailey at his office in Jefferson City. They were met by an aide that refused to adequately identify himself, according to Householder.

“He wouldn’t give us his last name,” Householder said.

Householder’s parents, Boyd and Stephanie Householder, ran Circle of Hope Girls Ranch in Cedar County and face 99 felony counts that include statutory rape and physical abuse, according to The Star. Amanda Householder is estranged from her parents, she told me.

Bailey’s failure to take a strong stand against alleged abuse inside these loosely regulated boarding schools needs to be called out, she said.

Instead of meeting with about 20 survivors of abuse — as Householder and Clohessy would hope — the Missouri Attorney General seems to have spent the better part of the last two weeks needlessly campaigning for a Kansas City employee to lose their job making the rounds in right-wing media appearances.

I guess he got his wish.