Earlier today, we told you that Curt Schilling is catching well-deserved flak for passing on a particularly hateful meme attacking transgender people. Well, late Wednesday night, his bosses at ESPN responded in the most meaningful way possible–they axed him from his post as a baseball analyst.
For those who missed it, Schilling is under fire for posting this to his Facebook page:
In the face of a firestorm of criticism, Schilling tried–and failed–to defend himself in an interview with WEEI in Boston on Wednesday afternoon. He claimed he only replied to the post, but didn’t actually post it. This continued a line he kept up after Outsports first discovered the original post.
@rpmcq57 @espn @outsports really? That's not even a post I made you dinkus.
— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) April 19, 2016
@Isaac_Farmer don't care and you are the opposite of right. But keep trying to be offended by anything someone can make up
— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) April 19, 2016
Au contraire, Curt. Au contraire. Not only did you share this, but you also posted a comment:
After a torrent of demands for him to be axed, the Worldwide Leader in Sports issued a terse two-sentence statement that it has always considered itself “an inclusive company.” It added that it had informed Schilling that “his conduct was unacceptable,” and as a result, his services were no longer needed.
ESPN really had no choice here. The network is one of the most LGBT-friendly entities in the sporting world. Two of its top reporters, LZ Granderson and Kate Fagan, are openly gay. Additionally, a baseball editor at ESPN, Christina Kahrl, is a trans woman.
Deadspin’s Kevin Draper notes that this isn’t the first time that Schilling has gone several miles over the line. Last summer, he got in hot water for likening Muslims to Nazis, which led the network to yank him off its coverage of the Little League World Series. Shortly afterward, after ESPN got wind of another Islamophobic email he sent to a blogger, it yanked him off the air for the rest of the year. Earlier this year, he suggested that Hillary Clinton should have been “buried under a jail somewhere.”
But this latest screed from Schilling appeared to be the last straw. Attacking transgender people is bad enough, but when you actually work with them on a regular basis? That, more than anything, is why Schilling got axed.
