Dori Monson indefinitely suspended by Seahawks, KIRO after transphobic tweet

Right wing talk radio per­son­al­i­ty Dori Mon­son no longer has a plat­form from which to pro­mote Tim Eyman’s destruc­tive ini­tia­tives and oth­er harm­ful agen­das. At least not for the time being, anyway.

The Seat­tle Sea­hawks and Bon­neville Inter­na­tion­al, which owns KIRO FM) revealed today that they have sus­pend­ed Mon­son indef­i­nite­ly after he post­ed a trans­pho­bic tweet dur­ing Wednes­day’s guber­na­to­r­i­al debate between Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent Jay Inslee and Repub­li­can chal­lenger Loren Culp.

The tweet has been delet­ed, but we have a copy of it. It said:

“Inslee: we fol­low sci­ence in WA. The state where I could go to Olympia tomor­row and change my birth cert to say I was a girl on 10/2/61 HAHAHAHAHA.”

– Dori Monson

As Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­ers are like­ly aware, this is hard­ly the first offen­sive and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry thing that Dori has said.

Nonethe­less, it prompt­ed a fresh out­cry on social media.

“If the Sea­hawks tru­ly believe they are attempt­ing to cre­ate a wel­com­ing and inclu­sive foot­ball com­mu­ni­ty in this region, they need to dis­as­so­ci­ate them­selves with Dori Mon­son and his glib trans­pho­bia,” tweet­ed Mike All Sawyer the night of the debate.

“Hi Sea­hawks — as a sea­son tick­et hold­er and long­time fan, and also some­one from a fam­i­ly that loves and sup­ports trans peo­ple, please cut ties with this man. He’s gen­er­al­ly pret­ty awful, but def­i­nite­ly trans­pho­bic as evi­denced in this tweet,” wrote Jen­na Rahm.

The Sea­hawks, not sur­pris­ing­ly, act­ed first, and Bon­neville fol­lowed suit.

Mon­son did not host his show today.

When con­tact­ed by The Seat­tle Times for com­ment, Mon­son declined to say any­thing on the record. Smart move. As the old adage goes, when you’re in a hole, quit dig­ging. Mon­son knows he’s in a hole — one of his own mak­ing — and is choos­ing to lay low rather than make things worse for himself.

Bon­neville-owned KIRO FM also said that it would have no com­ment on the mat­ter, cit­ing its pol­i­cy on per­son­nel matters.

On social media, how­ev­er, there were plen­ty of peo­ple offer­ing comment.

“No one is going to miss Dori Monson/Dori Mon­son Show, Sea­hawks. Seat­tle has much bet­ter,” tweet­ed Vikkids.

“Dori Mon­son get­ting kicked to the curb is a nice way to cel­e­brate Blue Fri­day,” Skiff­FeldSpar agreed.

“He says out­ra­geous thing on his radio show all the time. There’s free speech and then there’s decen­cy. Dori Mon­son is a huge jerk. He should­n’t be reward­ed for say­ing out­ra­geous things,” green­chile opined.

“Yeah, it’s pol­i­tics. And when it comes to your employ­er, pol­i­tics is a per­fect­ly legit­i­mate rea­son to no longer pay some­one to work for you. Sor­ry Trump­ies, free speech sim­ply doesn’t apply here. He’s got the same speech rights he always had. He just doesn’t have that job,” Joe Puhlman point­ed out. (Right wing groups and activists are all for “employ­er rights” except when it comes to an employ­er’s right to sus­pend or sack some­one for spout­ing big­ot­ed right wing views.)

I went on Dori’s show twice last year to respond to his attacks on  mul­ti­modal trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture and make the case against Tim Eyman’s I‑976 to his lis­ten­ers. I did so from KIRO’s stu­dio on both occa­sions rather than by phone. I found Dori’s off-air demeanor to be rather dif­fer­ent from his on-air one. When not speak­ing into a micro­phone, he does­n’t speak as loud­ly or irri­tat­ing­ly, for exam­ple. I found him capa­ble of car­ry­ing on a nor­mal, cor­dial con­ver­sa­tion with no oth­er audi­ence except for me and his producer.

It’s Dori’s on-air, on social media per­sona that is the prob­lem. I believe Dori speaks and acts the way he does to cul­ti­vate his right wing fol­low­ing. It’s not clear to me that he tru­ly holds all of the beliefs that he espous­es to hold through his now sus­pend­ed program.

Our region sim­ply does­n’t need unin­formed, big­ot­ed, right wing com­men­tary on our air­waves. It would be won­der­ful to see Dori’s tired, harm­ful show get can­celed per­ma­nent­ly and be replaced by pro­gram­ming that’s actu­al­ly infor­ma­tive and educational.