08-21-26 Part One - Save Women's Sports

Red Eye Radio

Red Eye Radio discusses the resignation of Seattle Times sports columnist Matt Calkins, who was denied publication of a column supporting bi

Key takeaways

• Media organizations are increasingly acting as political activists rather than neutral platforms for diverse opinions.

Main topics

• Media bias and political activism in journalism

Notable quotes

The controversial, the radical view is biological males should be playing female sports. That's the radicalism.

Conclusion

The episode underscores growing concerns about media suppression of wide

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:04) The Speaker 4 (0:05) city moves fast, but your vibe, that's different. Sharper, smoother, more alive. Speaker 7 (0:15) The new Speaker 4 (0:20) Honda City isn't just made to drive, it's made to feel. The new Honda City, all new vibe. Speaker 4 (0:35) Now, it's Red Eye Radio. Gary McNamara and Eric Harley talk about everything from politics to social issues and news of the day. Whether you're up late or you're just starting your day, welcome to the show. From the Relief Factor Studios, this is Red Eye Radio. All across Speaker 3 (0:55) America, we are Red Eye Radio. I'm Gary McNamara. He is Eric Harley. Once again, you Speaker 6 (1:02) are Gary McNamara. Radio host, you are no longer Crypto King. I am no longer Crypto Speaker 1 (1:10) King. Speaker 2 (1:10) It has been resolved. Thank you to the team at X. We, and people say this all the time. You guys are connected. Speaker 6 (1:20) You have, you know, you're on the inside of things, whether it's the White House, whatever, you know, that we're well connected. We did reach out directly to Elon Musk, and he... blocked us, and also put a restraining order on both of us. So there's that. But, no, they got it straightened out for you, the team at X, apparently, without doing away with your account. Speaker 1 (1:47) Yeah, that was great. So that's very good. Well, you know, the interesting thing is, after it happened, I just happened to see somebody who I know who was in the media, hockey media. in Buffalo that was saying that, hey, these two people have been hacked, just so you know. Right, right. And I was just in communication with one of them. It was National Radio Day yesterday, so all the radio people were posting their old pictures, and I posted on Facebook my nerdy picture from when I worked in Marshall, Texas. I mean, I was a dweeb. I mean, seriously, I was a dweeb. I Speaker 6 (2:22) always miss Speaker 1 (2:22) that. Speaker 6 (2:22) I always miss that day. It never comes up on my... Speaker 1 (2:27) It's so much fun. And somebody I hired, they said they were hacked. And I went to his ex site, which is locked now. It's locked. But same crypto bots. Exact same one that hit me. So Speaker 3 (2:45) without question, they're targeting the media. I don't know if I was the first. I still have no idea how they got me. I have no idea. Speaker 6 (2:53) Well, I saw a post. In fact, funny you say that. I saw a post from Sean Hannity where he bought a new house in Florida, but then that's just because he makes a lot more money than we do. It had nothing to do with crypto. It was actually real. Speaker 1 (3:07) What was funny, hilarious, was I wake up yesterday and I see our buddy Richard Rosso, the great financial guy from Houston, and a good friend. Speaker 1 (3:21) He goes, oh, look what Gary's doing. I'm paraphrasing here. Look what Gary's doing now with the, this was on Facebook, with crypto, with his crypto earnings, whatever. And there's this beautiful pool, looks like a mansion pool, and all these women, young women hanging out in bikinis. It's like, what you can get. No, Speaker 2 (3:40) that's specific. That's how you know Rosso knows you. Speaker 1 (3:44) Yeah, exactly. And I wrote back to him, I said, Is that what's on there today? And he goes, I'm just screwing with you. Speaker 2 (3:52) Now, if Speaker 1 (3:53) you see Speaker 2 (3:54) a post on my ex account that says Eric bought this new guitar from his casino winnings, that's real. Speaker 1 (4:03) Okay. Speaker 2 (4:03) Yeah. Speaker 6 (4:04) It hasn't happened yet, but if it does happen, nothing's wrong with my account. Some of my favorites, one of Speaker 1 (4:12) my favorites was Matt Murphy. Did you see that from Nashville? WTN. I Speaker 2 (4:18) must say I was a bit confused. Yeah, I was a bit confused. I Speaker 1 (4:23) burst out laughing, the great Matt Murphy. Yeah, he's great. He's really Speaker 2 (4:29) part of the Red Eye family, not just from the great affiliate Speaker 6 (4:32) of WTN, but he's been on. for us before. He now is doing afternoons. Does a great job. I tune in quite a bit, in fact, and watch him, actually. They actually have a camera in their studio and does a great job, as they all do. Dan Mandis and all of them at WTN. Speaker 1 (4:51) Luckily, everybody, 99.9 % of people knew that it was BS. Yeah. But what a... What a day yesterday for news. We'll just start with one topic. I don't even know if it's in the order of importance or Speaker 3 (5:10) not. But this was huge. Now, this is the most important because it relates to something that we've said all along, that in the mainstream media, they're political activists. Yes. And this is that Seattle Times story, the columnist. Now, remember, he's a columnist. Yeah. They pay him to give. His opinion. Right. He's a sports columnist. The Seattle Times lost sports columnist Matt Calkins in a highly publicized resignation on Thursday after Calkins claimed the paper refused to run a piece on women sports activists. Calkins, who spent 11 years with the Seattle Times to the decision not to publish his column. left him unable to perform the job that he was hired to do. So what do you think he was running on? You think he was running on something that was so controversial like he was promoting like those insane activists do, pedophilia? No. Something like that. You couldn't permit that, right? Right. You just couldn't permit something like that. Speaker 2 (6:20) Right. Speaker 3 (6:21) Or as a, well, Speaker 1 (6:22) no, as a sports columnist. you know, coming out with something like the Buffalo Bills are going to win the Super Bowl this year. Right. Speaker 2 (6:29) And they go, come on, look. As a Seattle Times sports columnist, I'm more of a Buffalo fan than I am a Seahawks fan. Yeah, right. Something like that. Right. Speaker 3 (6:39) Exactly. Or this year, there will be no arrest of Dallas Cowboys players. Speaker 1 (6:46) Yeah. Which would Speaker 3 (6:47) be insane. You can't say that. Right. Or Speaker 1 (6:49) former players. Exactly. Something. I mean, Romo finally got caught up. Speaker 3 (6:55) The column centered on the two Washington student athletes who opposed allowing transgender women to compete in female sports. That means biological men. that were recently at the center of a national controversy after they attended a Seattle Storm WNBA game to support Sophie Cunningham's support for Protecting Women's Sports. Calkins sought to make the case that supporting sex-separated athletic competition does not necessarily reflect hostility towards transgender people. Speaker 3 (7:37) I tried to write a column through the eyes of two student athletes who were kind of speaking out against biological males in girls' women's sports, and I submitted the column a couple of Fridays ago to my editors. Basically, six days went by, and they said, we're looking at it. Let me give it to the editor. The editor is going to have a talk. with the top two editors, and six days later, they decided it was not going to run, he told Fox News Digital. All they said was, you didn't tell us that you were doing this in advance, so we can't run it, but I didn't buy the excuse. Calkins added that he wanted to platform the voices of girls who speak out against biological males. in women's sports. I wanted to get their voices out there, Calkins said. I feel like if you look at most media, the girls who have to compete against biological males, I feel their voices get stifled a lot. Calkins said the rejection followed a pattern involving several previous columns. Anytime I would kind of go against the grain, my columns would always get spiked. Speaker 3 (9:04) Calkins emphasized that he respects the former editors. How can you say that? And understands the pressure they face when deciding whether to publish commentary on divisive subjects. It's not a divisive subject! No. Did I scream? I don't know. I Speaker 6 (9:22) don't know. I couldn't hear you. Speaker 3 (9:23) It's not a commentary on divisive subjects. He said he does not harbor personal animosity towards his former colleagues. Yeah. What he's saying is you cannot get through the insanity of the Seattle Times. Right. Yeah. I mean, there is nothing controversial about biological men not playing women's sports. Right. Speaker 3 (9:51) The controversial, the radical view is biological males should be playing female sports. That's the radicalism. Yeah. But understand this is what we've said all along. And we said it a long, long, long, long time ago. He may be a columnist who is a journalist. I don't know. I haven't seen other columns that he has written. Right. But in this case, the editors are political activists. They're saying we cannot present both sides of the issue. In fact, we cannot present the side of the issue that overwhelmingly Americans agree with. We can only promote and allow you to write about the most radical opinions that exist. One of the most radical opinions that exist probably in any political subject in my lifetime. Speaker 2 (10:52) Think about if it came to us or any talk show host and management came and said, no, you have to take this position. Speaker 6 (11:04) Well, Speaker 2 (11:04) talk radio would be over. Quite frankly, podcasts, many podcasts would be done. I mean, if they, Rogan talked about Speaker 6 (11:12) this when they first signed the Spotify deal. You know, they came in, the executives, okay, so, you know, now that you're under Spotify, who's your first guest going to be? And he went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, it doesn't work that way. I do my thing, and you guys, you know, basically do the distribution. There's not Speaker 2 (11:30) going to, basically not going to be any influence from management whatsoever. And you and I have talked about how we greatly appreciate and are very grateful for this opportunity to do what we do. Speaker 6 (11:44) As Speaker 2 (11:44) a sports columnist, if you want to project an opinion on something that right now is dominating sports, this is dominating sports because of the whole WNBA thing. It is as relevant as you can get. especially for the WNBA, which up Speaker 6 (12:05) until now, you know, was only at times relevant, but it has been daily Speaker 2 (12:11) updates on this issue. And a sports columnist is there. You hire that person to speak their mind. And if you're going to say, nope, you toe the line. Speaker 2 (12:29) And we're not going to put this out. We're not going to put this here. It's not like he came out and accused someone, as far as we know, of doing something wrong that they didn't do. Any kind of, it wasn't any kind of slander. It wasn't the New York Times. Exactly. Speaker 1 (12:50) We'll get to that story later. Speaker 2 (12:51) It wasn't, it was, this is the opinion. This is, and by the way. Speaker 2 (13:00) It's very clear where most people stand on this. Yeah. And it's a landslide issue. If you have a sports columnist, you know, by the way, this is a huge missed opportunity for the Seattle Times. Because I'm guessing a lot of the readers of the Seattle Times. Speaker 2 (13:27) Left. They're on the left. Yep. And they read that and then they're going to respond to that. You have that back and forth, quite frankly, in today's world. That brings a little bit of heat, a little bit of attention to that. As long as you're putting it out in a thoughtful way, there's no reason to believe he didn't or he wasn't going to. And this is where we are today. The organizations themselves. We've said it for the longest time. This isn't some grand conspiracy. This is the mindset of these individuals. They all have the same mindset. They run organizations. They run cities. They run states. And if you get in their way, you're done. Your career could be over. Or worse. Speaker 2 (14:25) And this is one Speaker 1 (14:27) more example. And the interesting thing is this isn't about placement of stories. No. That you can see the editor say, no, we believe, look, this is the top story today. So we're going to put this, you know, where you place the story. Like if Speaker 6 (14:43) the Mariners were moving or something, you know, to another city or Speaker 1 (14:47) something. When I did, not all the time, but when I did local shows, you remember when... when I was doing local at WBAP, you remember David. Yeah. Yeah. When, when I've, uh, you know, started there, they would, he would come in and he goes, you know, and we would talk about it. He'd give me, you know, here's topics, you know, whatever, here's what I have, you know, what do you think? Well, I think this, I think this, and I don't think we ever disagreed on anything. Right. And he never said, you need to cover this first, or you can only have this opinion. Right. You know, orders of stories might've been the thing now at, at, you know, this level that, that. we're at now, there's nothing except what we wish to do, but nobody, only one time in my life. Speaker 1 (15:36) And it was not a corporation. It was an individual station manager who said, you know, I didn't like your opinion on that. And I went, I don't give a damn. I mean, that was basically my answer. I don't give a damn. And we had it out. I mean, it's the worst. A couple of weeks later, we had it out. It was the worst. Let's put it this way. Everybody in the station heard me. And I don't think, I mean, you know, you know me well enough that. And the relationship that we have with our management and other management, because you and I have been through, what, three or four companies now? Yeah. And a bunch of different managements. Right. And we don't operate that way. For me to yell had to get to a point of, you know, this is absolutely unacceptable. If you don't like it, I said it. If you don't like it, fire me. Right. I'm not going to do it. Yeah. I've always said this, you know, and I know you agree with this. You sign your name here to what you do. Every day you sign your name. These are our real names. I can't lie. I mean, the lyrics of the song, I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I'm not. And it's a simple thing that we live by. We tell what you think. It's why I left Aerosmith. Well, when we talk about... Speaker 1 (16:58) Because we used to get this, we don't get it anymore. Well, you guys are basically, you know, you remember the guy who called us one time and said, you guys get your talking points every morning from the, what was it? The, was it the new world order or the military industrial industrial complex? And we, and we said, what do you think? We get, you know, we, we, we get something sent to us at nine 30 every morning. He went, yes. Oh man, we just burst out laughing. And a lot of people can't believe it. A lot of people can't believe I can't Speaker 3 (17:24) believe it. I can't believe that my entire career in talk radio now, over three and a half decades, that you could maybe look at these people that have been our management and go, they're really idiots. They said you should go on the air and just talk about whatever you want, and they believe they can sell this, and you've done this for three and a half decades? Really? You? They're allowing you to do this? I have to question their sanity. Speaker 3 (17:54) Exactly. We are Run-Eye Radio. 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