Curt Schilling has stepped in it again. The former Boston Red Sox pitcher and ESPN baseball analyst posted a truly disgusting meme concerning the controversy involving laws enacted to prevent transgendered people from utilizing the rest rooms they identify with and added his own misanthropic bigoted commentary to the issue.
It’s not the first time that Schilling has stepped in it. Last August he was removed from ESPN’s analyst chair during the Little League World Series for comparing Muslims to Nazis. Whether that will result in his being named to Donald Trump’s team of National Security Advisers remains to be seen. On the other hand, Trump has endorsed the right of transgendered people to use the restroom of their choosing before changing his mind and declaring it should be left up to the states. So, he may view Schilling as being too extreme.
My initial reaction was that for Shilling, to have been caught up in two such controversies this close together, after the NBA and NCAA publicly announced they might move championship games out of states enacting such laws, tells me that he has the brains of a soil sample.
Schilling has sought to ameliorate his offensive postings by labeling them as his opinions. Implicit in this defense is the suggestion that he should not be sanctioned for expressing them.
This leads us to a larger question. What should be the consequences for posting or expressing truly bigoted, hateful views?
Schilling has a constitutional right to express his disgusting opinions but he does not have a right to sit in the ESPN analyst chair and be richly compensated by the network who must be concerned that their analyst’s views on social issues are anathema to much of their viewers. This past Wednesday ESPN fired Schilling.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
We have seen this debate emerge before. The Westboro Baptist Church claimed a constitutional right to picket the funeral services of dead soldiers carrying signs proclaiming that those dead were killed because God hates America because of gay rights. At another time The American Nazi Party litigated its right to march through the predominantly Jewish city of Skokie, Illinois. In each case both of these hate groups prevailed in court.
After giving it some thought, I think the way these groups were handled was wrong headed.
I think they should be informed that while they had a constitutional right to picket and march, they have no right to police protection. Our police departments have more important tasks to perform.
If Westboro offended the Hells Angels by their picketing or the Nazi’s offended a much larger group of Jewish citizens in Skokie or the Ku Klux Klan decides to march through Harlem and things get rough, well, perhaps they should have thought about that in advance.
On his blog, Schilling says “opinions are like buttholes.” He must have discovered that by looking in the mirror.
I love seeing people engage in self-awareness.