Curt Schilling was an Open Conservative at ESPN. That is Radical. And They Fired Him For It.

By Tom Gilson Published on April 21, 2016

The Washington Post is reporting on the “radicalization” of Curt Schilling, the former Boston Red Sox pitcher who pitched two winning games in the 2004 World Series, and later became a Major League Baseball analyst for ESPN. Radical? Apparently so. ESPN fired him on Monday for “unacceptable conduct.”

“ESPN is an inclusive company,” the network explained. “Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.”

How was he radical? What got him fired? We’ll get to that in a moment. It must have been pretty bad, though. USA Today described him as expressing pattern of opinions that were “appalling, insensitive and nasty, over and over again,” adding, “there was more to this firing than the hatred contained in his words.”

What was this all about, then? His first error, apparently, was suggesting (“blurting out,” said the AP in a story today) in a TV interview several years ago that people vote for George Bush. Nasty.

Later he compared the firing of General George Petraeus for lax security with confidential information with Hillary Clinton’s email carelessness: “If I’m going to believe, and I don’t have any reason not to believe, that she gave classified information on hundreds if not thousands of emails on a public server after what happened to General Petraeus, she should buried under a jail somewhere.”

Appalling. Insensitive.

But what got him fired in the end was a Facebook post opposing men’s and women’s equal access to each other’s public restrooms.

He didn’t actually post the original image, but he did comment on it supportively. “A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. … Now you need laws telling us differently?” The image was admittedly a bit crude, as was some of his language, in the portion replaced here by an ellipsis. That wasn’t what got him fired, though, as much as the position he was supporting: that it’s good policy to keep restroom designations the way they’ve always been.

USA Today says he broke the cardinal rule in his profession: Report the news, don’t make it. Of course, the cardinal rule applies only to those who step out of line from the liberal PC group think, but adding all that nuance into the cardinal rule would make it a good deal less snappy sounding.

Schilling was a member of the mainstream media who supports conservative views. That was his real crime. So as of this week ESPN, a self-described “inclusive company,” has excluded him.

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