Clay Travis (2:17)
Welcome back in Clay Travis Buck Sexton show. Buck is out will be back with me on Tuesday. He's starting his Memorial Day holiday weekend a little bit early, as I'm sure many of you are as well. We got a bunch of guests coming up on the back half of the program. Carol Markowitz, Frank Siller, and West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrissey. All still to come, lots of reaction rolling in. And you guys have been really great at this. But I, I, I, A lot of you are reacting to the Caitlin Clark analogy because I think it has struck you, and I don't know that anybody else, frankly, would make the analogy, because even if you thought of it in sports, so many people are terrified of saying anything that could be considered controversial in the realm of race. And to say, hey, a white girl's being treated differently because she's a white girl, it's like, oh, my, oh, my goodness. How dare you? And this email is actually great. And again, I just want you to think about it in the context of the culture and the idea of, again, a rising tide lifted all boats. Last hour, I said, look, I wish there was. It's, you know, NFL quarterbacks. Everybody's contract comes up and they make more money. I'm always of the opinion, I want everybody to make as much money as possible. I want everybody that does what I do to make as much money as possible. Charlemagne, the God, I want you swimming in a, in a Scrooge McDuck vault full of cash. Bobby Bones, I want you buying your own plane. Sean Hannity, you already got your own plane, but more power to you. By the way, not a small plane either. Like a really awesome, badass plane. Good for Sean Hannity. Rush, we've been here four years. Rush is the most successful person in the history of radio. Howard Stern, back before he lost his mind. I want all those people to make as much money as possible. I want them to be as successful as possible because a rising tide lifts all boats. I made this argument a while back. You guys remember when Tony Romo, out of Nowhere, suddenly made $17 million to call NFL games out of nowhere, Tony Romo. CBS had to pay him $17 million a year to call games. You know what ended up happening? Everybody else got nearly $17 million to call games. You shouldn't, in my opinion, if you are a capitalist, be angry when someone else in your realm of life makes good money. You should be looking at them, give them the thumbs up and figure out how to do it yourself and hopefully exceed what they do. That's how the golfers responded to Tiger Woods. The Tiger Tide lifted all boats. That's how the tennis players responded to Venus and Serena Williams. The Venus and Serena Williams tide lifted all boats. All tennis players made way more money. All golfers made way more money. People who didn't look like most of the golfers and most of the tennis players came in and made everybody more Money. Why isn't the same happening in the wnba? I think it's because racism in this country has convinced black women that they can't be racist. And so, unlike white golfers and unlike white tennis players who were like, man, I'm not going to do anything racist. I'm going to make sure that I welcome these people who look differently than me, and everybody ends up benefiting as a result. A lot of these black basketball players have decided that they hate Caitlin Clark. And a lot of you are reacting. I wanted to read this email if I can find it. This is from one of our VIPs. She's in Memphis, says, Hey, I played D1 basketball. And she writes as follows. You're so correct on this issue. I play D1 women's college basketball. I live in Memphis, a city I love, but can be super racially hypersensitive. Uh, my husband is a public school administrator. We see it and live it within the circles we live in. We're white. For Caitlin Clark, it's not only because she's white, but also because she's straight. There are a ton of lesbians as well. No shock to a lot of you, I would imagine, but in the wnba. So Caitlin Clark has two differences compared to the group that she is entering. She's white and straight in a league that has a lot of black lesbians. If she weren't so dominant, it wouldn't be an issue. Again, this is according to One of our VIPs, former D1 basketball player. Other players are jealous of her. She said, I never cared. This is our VIP emailer about paying attention to the wnba. Prior to her arrival, I took my daughter to her first game last year. We drove to Indianapolis. Two rows below us was a father and an adult daughter from my hometown in Alabama. It was their first game. Also, she has brought in many people that did not support the league previously. And she says, and we're a big sports family, and it's not. And by the way, I appreciate the email. She said, thanks for all you do. We appreciate you listening, but this is what you want, right? Think about it. If you're a business and your business has been, let's be honest, the WNBA business, awful. And suddenly you get this meteor streaking across the night sky. You get your Tiger, you get your Venus or your Serena. The league should be losing its mind over how excited they are. Every player. You know what? The average player rookie contract in The WNBA is 75K. Now, I'm not trying to shoot down 75K. My starting salary as a lawyer. After I spent a 3 years, I made less than 75k. For much of my life, I made less than 75k. I'm not trying to denigrate it, but there are dudes coming to work as plumbers now making more money in their 20s than WNBA athletes. So, like, if the WNBA ladies, the girls, they were just like, oh, we don't want. We're doing great without her. I'd be like, okay, well, I don't really get it, but the jealousy would make sense. You're all gonna make more money. You might make six figures. I saw the other day a girl got fined in the WNBA. They kept a paycheck. It was $48. All right, I'm just saying. I did radio for $50 a show, so I know what it's like to not make much money. But when you get fined and you're fined for what you did is less than a parking ticket, you're probably not making a ton of money. It is so moronic. How does it happen now? Some people out there, they're sexist and they're like, well, it's just. That's how women are. Women are super jealous. But it didn't apply in tennis. I don't think it's gender based. I think it's race based and maybe, as the emailer said, sexuality based too. But it's also so counterproductive. And I worry that it is, unfortunately a metaphor for what is going on in the country as a whole. This one's going to get me in trouble. Turn down the radio if you got young kids in the car. I was saying, major issue is dei. It's not so much the D or the I, it's the E. Right? It's equity instead of equality. Because most of you out there, well, look, diversity, the diversity that matters is diversity of thought, not diversity of skin color. But I do think diversity of thought matters. If I run a company and I got eight people sitting around on my board and they all look different, but give me the exact same advice, is that really helping me as a CEO? Larry David made fun of this. The idea of cosmetic diversity. There's a great scene in Curb youb Enthusiasm, A great season in Curb youb Enthusiasm, where a white guy is in charge of making all the creative decisions, but he has, like, a woman in a wheelchair and, like, a gay trans person, like, sitting on the couch in his room, and all they do is nod. That is the diversity. But he's still the dude making the decision. If I'm Asking people for advice. I want a variety of opinions. My wife used to get mad at me because I would ask her for an opinion or advice and then I wouldn't do what she said. I didn't. Not a smart guy. I didn't realize that she was like, like, I've given you 32 straight advice points and you haven't done any of them or what? But I. She's super smart. She went to Vanderbilt Law School. I want somebody super smart telling me what they think to make sure that I'm not missing something. Doesn't mean that I'm going to make the choice that you suggest or follow your guidance completely. I just want to make sure that I'm considering the entirety of opinions. So diversity actually of thought makes total sense. You are going to be successful more in life if you challenge your opinions than if you surround people who always say, oh, you're right. So diversity of thought matters. Inclusion matters. You want to include as many different opinions as possible because I have the idea that this is how you end up in a better place. The reason why I think we're going to be more successful than China in the long run is because China artificially circumscribes what its people can be exposed to. And if you can't see everything and consider everything, particularly in a modern AI era, how do you come up with something new? Newness is, generally speaking, a conflict between two divergent perspectives. Boom. It creates something new. All right, this keep. Now I told you to turn down the radio too quick. You know the analogy that actually should get used that nobody talks about. Strip clubs make way more money if the girls look different. I'm just telling you, if you only have a strip club and every girl is a blonde, maybe that exists in Sweden. I don't know. It doesn't do as well as a Vegas style strip club where every girl looks different. I'm just telling you, strip club is probably the greatest example of diversity working. Because if every girl looks the same, they're all competing for the same dude. And a dude who might be interested in something else, he comes in, he doesn't spend his money. I don't know if we have any strip club operators listening right now, but I guarantee the guy who gal who runs a strip club is like clapping their hands together. It's like you're the first person to ever make this analogy to millions of people on a radio show ever. Probably for a reason. But it's true. The WNBA has an opportunity with a unique talent the likes of which has never existed in the history of the league to actually make people care about their product. And they hate her because she's straight, and they hate her because she's white. And what does the WNBA's response to Caitlin Clark in a larger context tell us about not allowing the rising tide to lift all boats? That certainly was the case in the 1950s, because if you were black in America, you had a lot less opportunities than a white kid did. And that's offensive to me because it means we didn't get the best maximal talent from everybody who was a United States citizen. Are we starting to do the same in the 2020s because of racial politics? I think the answer is yes. And I think, unfortunately, it's not the exact same story. But history rhymes. It doesn't repeat. And the rhyme is Caitlin Clark isn't getting treated like Tiger woods or Serena Williams or Venus Williams. Why? I think because black women in the WNBA are convinced they can't be racist and they're not concerned at all about welcoming Caitlin into their sorority, into their business, even though the Caitlin Clark tied would make them all richer, and maybe you'd make more than $75,000 a year because of all the new fans coming in. I think this is such a huge, evocative moment, and I think it connects with so much of what we're seeing in far more significant and serious arenas. I'm going to ask Carol Markowitz about this here in a minute, see if she thinks I'm a moron. You may think I'm a moron, and certainly you're welcome to call and tell me to a 800-282-2882. Is the phone number 800-282-2882? Kate writes in. You made so much sense. I've been trying to figure all this out myself. Awesome job, Clay. Happy Memorial Weekend. Well, Kate, I love you. Thank you for having such great taste in how you're deciding to spend the Friday before your Memorial Day weekend. What do I need to talk about right now? I need to talk about trusts and wills. Look, here's the reality. Kind of a bummer, but we're all gonna die. Yeah. So far, death is undefeated is the. It is the one thing that we all share, no matter what. Are you prepared for when that day arises? Are you prepared, most significantly, for limiting how much grief and stress your family feels when you pass? You can take care of a lot of that by just putting your life in order before you go. And. And that's what trustandwill.com is designed to do. They make it simple, affordable, give you peace of mind. Your surviving family doesn't have to worry about anything. Don't put it off. 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