ESPN, the self-proclaimed “inclusive company,” fired outspoken conservative and former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling from his job as a baseball analyst on Wednesday over what they deemed to be “unacceptable” conduct.
Schilling’s offense was a post on his personal Facebook page criticizing transgender bathroom rights. The post included a meme that shows a man in a blond wig wearing revealing women’s clothing and says, "Let him in! To the restroom with your daughter or else you're a narrow minded, judgmental, unloving, racist bigot who needs to die!!!"
According to The Huffington Post, Schilling also added his own comment to the meme before he deleted the post from his page.
“A man is a man no matter what they call themselves,” he wrote. “I don’t care what they are, who they sleep with, men’s room was designed for the penis, women’s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.”
The statement ESPN released regarding Schilling’s termination said that the sports network (owned by Disney) is “inclusive” and that “his conduct was unacceptable.”
ESPN also noted that this wasn’t the first time Schilling’s been in hot water with the sports network. Last August, he was suspended for comparing ISIS to the Nazis. Again, however, this was on his Twitter account—not on air, leading some to suspect he was fired for simply being a conservative. After all, the network seems perfectly fine when extreme liberal views are made on air—such as when employee Tony Kornheiser made a connection between the Islamic State and the Tea Party, and questioned whether the latter was trying to “establish a caliphate” in the U.S. But that is just one example out of many that led Newsbusters to conclude ESPN is basically MSNBC with better video.