Gerry Callahan’s New Producer Matt Carano Is Refusing To Do His Job Unless Gerry Keeps Me Off His Show Because A Cancel Mob Was Mean To Him On Twitter
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Two years ago I was invited by Gerry Callahan to be a weekly guest on the podcast he was launching. I was excited and said yes because I’d been listening to Gerry’s highly rated morning show for years on WEEI, and I’m always looking to expand my audience. Gerry, like me, is conservative and likes to rail against the establishment and cancel culture, so it was a good fit.
Gerry was starting a podcast because he and Kirk Minihane had been driven out of WEEI by a lone man in Sherborn named Bob Murchison. The millionaire activist had been relentlessly harassing WEEI’s advertisers with hundreds of daily emails, misrepresenting the things Kirk and Gerry said on their show in order to convince these companies not to advertise on the station anymore. It worked too, as many advertisers didn’t want to deal with the headache of Bob Murchison, and simply didn’t have time to look into the allegations he was making. Had they done so they would’ve realized that the content was harmless, but sometimes it’s easier for these companies to just allocate their advertising budget elsewhere. This is what cancel mobs and people like Murchison count on.
Gerry, Kirk, and their producers wanted someone to expose what Murchison had done. They ran it by the Boston Herald and Howie Carr, but nobody would write about it because they didn’t want to deal with Murchison either. So one day Kirk reached out to me, told me the story, put me in touch with his producer Joe Zarbano, and I published a story about it. To this date I’m still the only media outlet that defended them and exposed Murchison.
Gerry’s new podcast is anti-cancel culture, and was produced by a likable chap named Dave Cullinane. Dave mainly hung out in the background during shows and would pop up once in a while to add comedic humor or say something non-controversial. It was impossible not to like him and he was really good at his job.
I volunteered my time once a week for two years (twice a week when Cullinane was the producer) and used to drive into Boston at 5:30 in the morning to tape it in person before COVID.
I’d share some of our old clips but the latest producer appears to have deleted them from the Gerry Callahan Show Twitter account.
Then in June of 2020 Cullinane got an offer he couldn’t refuse to produce Kirk’s show at Barstool Sports. This created an opening on Gerry’s show, and a few people tried out to be the producer. Eventually he chose this man:
Matt Carano is something called a “Minifan,” which is a human being who travels to Madawaska, ME once a year to ice fish and asks for Steve Robinson to mention his offshoot podcast on the Kirk Minihane Show. He does a podcast called the Quantum Week Podcast, which is mostly about movies and tennis. It’s really exciting stuff.
He’s a really exciting person in general.
I didn’t know much about him, but I liked him at first because he was talkative and railed against censorship and cancel culture so he was cool by me.
Every Thursday morning he’d send me the Streamyard link to join the show and we’d spend an hour recording. He’s a libertarian who talks a lot more than Cullinane, doesn’t really have a personality, and takes himself way too seriously, but he got the job done.
Things seemed to be going fine until September when a cancel mob of Twitter morons led by a troll named Brian Riccio began coming after him for having me on the show. They’d send him links to various hit pieces about me, written by scorned ratchets I’d previously exposed on Turtleboy. At the time he was very worried about having me on because he’s not used to controversy, but he defended me publicly because he knew that Brian Riccio was not a serious person.
A week or so ago another hit piece was written about me on a website of zero significance that no sane person would ever take seriously. Ridiculous allegations were made about my personal life that have been disproven, and I didn’t respond to it publicly because giving these trolls attention is the only thing they really want. Their goal has been to disrupt my life and business, and get everyone I care about to abandon me, including family, friends, turtle riders, and Gerry Callahan.
However, unlike Bob Murchison these people have no power, and haven’t cost Gerry Callahan a single advertiser. They’re anonymous people with 3 followers on Twitter who all use my face as an avatar. They once again started chirping at Gerry and Carano, but I didn’t think he would take Lounge Lizard and Aidan’s Vinegar Stroke seriously.
They were literally advertising to the world that their goal is to cancel me on various platforms. If you give into these people then you’re not against cancel culture, you’re the reason cancel culture exists. I had faith that nothing would come of this.
Last week on Wednesday I texted Carano like I normally do to make sure we were still on for Thursday. Instead of calling or texting me back he contacted Gerry and told Gerry he wouldn’t go on the show with me because of what he had read about me on a free Wordpress site, written by someone I’d previously blogged about many times. Gerry tried to smooth things over by calling me, and I explained that it was a hit piece filled with lies. He said he’d call Carano and have him reach out to me. Regardless, I go on Gerry’s show to talk about sports, politics, and stories I broke that week, so it’s really just a distraction that no serious person should waste time on.
Gerry called me back shortly afterwards and told me Carano was refusing to go on with me, and asked me to wait a week until this all smoothed over. I said no problem, because I assumed Carano was a reasonable person who would realize how ridiculous it was for him to give into a small cancel mob on Twitter. I sent him some texts with links to stories I had written about the people who were coming after me, but he never responded.
The irony of this all is that the Gerry Callahan Show only exists because Gerry and Kirk were driven off of WEEI by a cancel culture movement led by Bob Murchison and the Boston Globe. The premise of the show was to rail against cancel culture
And now the producer was giving into an insignificant cancel mob on Twitter. He’s doing the exact same thing WEEI and their advertisers did – blindly believing misinformation without looking into it because they didn’t want the headache. That’s how weak, spineless, and scared Matt Carano is.
Czarbano.
I attempted to make light of it by retweeting his recent tweet in defense of white people using the n word:
And I’m the offensive one? https://t.co/26uIEZDKh0
— Aidan Kearney (@turtleboyphone) January 22, 2022
But he just blocked me, because he has no personality and seems to believe that whatever I’ve done is somehow less offensive than defending the n word on social media.
For what it’s worth, Gerry wanted me on the show. He said he was loyal and appreciated my defense of him and Kirk during the Murchison situation. But Gerry is the on air talent, and cannot do his show without a producer. He was in a tough spot because he wanted me on, but he was afraid to lose Carano and hoped that this would work itself out. Personally, I’d tell my employee that he doesn’t get to make personnel decisions on my podcast and that if he refuses to work with someone whose been very loyal to me and brings in an audience then he’s fired. But I guess I’m old school and believe that employees should do the job they’ve been hired to do.
Unfortunately Carano had other plans. On Friday I spoke with Kirk about the whole thing, and told him that I had gotten an email from the Holden Police Department that disproved much of what Carano had read about me. He told me to send it to Carano, assuming Carano was a reasonable person. So I did, but he had no interest in reading it:
You got my texts offering to explain my side of the story, showing you that I was being misrepresented and lied about, but you were too much of a coward to write back to me. Instead you called Gerry and told him you wouldn’t go on with me, and then he tried to smooth it over. You basically did what Wendy’s did to WEEI when Murchison sent them an email. You are a cancel culture fraud.
“I don’t have the finally say on content decisions for the Gerry Callahan Show.”
You kind of do though. And this isn’t to throw Gerry under the bus because he’s in a tough position. He doesn’t know how to produce a show, and doesn’t realize that you could find someone in 3 days on Indeed to do the job Carano does. If there’s any turtle riders out there with any sort of experience who would like to produce Gerry’s show and don’t believe in bowing to cancel mobs, send me an email at [email protected] and I’ll forward it to Gerry.
I alerted him that Gerry wanted to have me on, since I’d been so loyal to him all those years, but he made it clear that he would not produce Gerry’s show if I was a guest, and wouldn’t talk to me on the phone about it.
Not once does he even say what he’s upset about, or what he thinks I did, because he knows I didn’t do anything. He’s just on a power trip and wants to have the show all to himself.
Gerry suggested we have this discussion on the show. Cullinane was a good producer who understood that conflict is good radio, which is why he brought me on with Alex Reimer, who then freaked out and walked off the show:
I’d lay it all out and answer any questions he had for the world to hear, since I have nothing to hide. I said I would do it, but Carano refused. He’d rather just tweet about it and then block me:
“I don’t want private details about other people.”
Apparently you wanted to hear private details about me from random people on Twitter though, and you allowed it to affect personnel decisions on a podcast you don’t own. You’re now attempting to cancel me because of unsubstantiated private details about my personal life. You are a fraud.
“I don’t want my reputation affected by yours.”
What reputation? You’re some guy in New Hampshire with a Hitler Youth haircut who nobody cares about. You had no reputation. Until now.
Even though he’s got me blocked Carano still goes on my page to screenshot my tweets and reply back to them. He posted this today:
“You look like you’re spiraling out of control.”
Newsflash – this is pretty standard at Turtleboy. I get sued a lot. People threaten to kill me. Cancel mobs come at me constantly. I’m kicked off of almost every tech platform. I’ve had to take time off for depression and anxiety. But I keep getting up and writing blogs because that’s just what I do. You must be new here.
“Gerry agreed and benched you.”
I actually have it in writing otherwise Matt. This was your call, and you’ve convinced Gerry that he can’t do the show without you. You told both of us that you won’t go on with me, and without you Gerry thinks he can’t produce a show, so he doesn’t make you.
Out of respect for Gerry I kept my mouth shut about this, but Carano running his mouth on Twitter made it impossible for me to do so any longer. Gerry is hoping this goes away and that Carano comes to his senses, but clearly that’s not going to happen. Meanwhile people are asking me why I’m not on there and I’m sick of lying about why and covering for this toolbag.
The cancel culture crowd (including Brian Riccio) will be cheering this one on, so it looks like Carano got some new fans of the show. Not sure if that’s the crowd Gerry wants, but it’s what he’s going to get now. As I pointed out to Carano when I reached out to him for comment on this story, the primary account leading this cancel cult mostly just retweets left wing talking points from blue checkmarks.
Carano gave into these people because he is weak and cowardly, but he also did it because he wants to use Gerry’s platform to build a brand for himself. Tune into the GCS Locals page to listen to Carano talk about his interaction with the local government over COVID mandates. It’s exciting stuff!
Matt Carano is a fraud who pretends to stand up to cancel culture, but immediately bowed to it as soon as he was tested.
He’s doing the exact same thing WEEI’s producers and executives did to Kirk and Gerry – the bidding of a cancel mob acting in bad faith by misrepresenting things they had said and did. What I don’t understand is why he even likes Gerry and Kirk if he’s so afraid of controversy. It’s a large part of what they’re all about.
For the record, I’d still go on with him any time, anywhere. That’s what people should do in a free country when they have differences – confront each other and talk about it. You don’t have to agree, but you should be able to talk about it. Instead Carano is leveraging the power he has over Gerry to make the show all about him. And the precedent has been set that if Carano doesn’t like something about Gerry’s show then he can just threaten to quit and he will get his way.
As for me, I’ll do what I always do – create content on my website and my channels. If you listened to me on Gerry and don’t subscribe to our YouTube channel you can subscribe here. I had fun on Gerry’s show, and I’ll always be a fan and defender of his, even if it doesn’t work both ways. In the meantime, here’s Carano’s Twitter account. I heard if you tweet at him he’ll bend to your will. See if it works.
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