Sirius XM Fires Anthony Cumia of ‘Opie & Anthony’ over ‘Racially-Charged’ Tweets

Sirius XM fired shock jock Anthony Cumia of the “Opie & Anthony” radio show last week, after a series of “racially-charged” and “hate-filled” remarks on Twitter.

“SiriusXM has terminated its relationship with Anthony Cumia of the Opie & Anthony channel. The decision was made, and Cumia informed, late Thursday, July 3 after careful consideration of his racially-charged and hate-filled remarks on social media,” the satellite radio broadcaster, which has been airing “Opie & Anthony” since 2004, said in a statement. “Those remarks and postings are abhorrent to SiriusXM, and his behavior is wholly inconsistent with what SiriusXM represents.”

Cumia, who was one of the company’s most prominent talk-show hosts and whose career spans two decades and includes three firings, alleged in a tweet last week that he was punched in the face by a black woman who had stepped into the frame while he was taking a photograph in New York’s Times Square.

“This was an animal,” Cumia wrote on Twitter. “I shoulda smashed it’s face.”

He also added: “She’s lucky I was a white legal gun owner or she’d be dead. Then 5 blacks started giving me (expletive)!”

“It’s really open season on white people in this day and age,” Cumia wrote. “No recourse. Fight back and you’re a racist.” Cumia said he defended himself without hitting back.

The tweets were deleted from Cumia’s Twitter feed Saturday morning, one day after his firing, though Gawker has compiled many of them.

Cumia again took to Twitter, this time to criticize the decision to fire him.

“Sirius decided to cave and fire me. Welcome to bizarro world. Fired for (expletive) that wasn’t even on the air & wasn’t illegal. So, who’s next?,” he wrote Friday in a post that has since been deleted.

{snip}