ESPN suspended Curt Schilling from the Little League World Series for his tweet comparing the number of extremists in Islam today to the number of Nazis in Germany in the 1940s. Now ESPN has suspended Curt Schilling for the rest of the Major League Baseball regular season and the Wild Card game the “4-letter network” is scheduled to host, for defending himself over that tweet.
This is the initial tweet that landed Schilling in hot water:
Then, as we reported earlier this week, Schilling sent an angry email to a writer at the sports/sports media website “Awful Announcing,” where he took exception to that website’s portrayal of him and his comments.
In the long email, Schilling charged the website with trying to “destroy what’s left of the public’s trust and confidence in media by creating a story of your own design,” and “smearing someone’s reputation to do it.” Schilling also made clear that when he issued his apology he was not apologizing for “the content of the tweet,” that he only compared “radical” Muslims to Nazis, not “peace-loving” Muslims and that he only regrets his “poor” choice of twitter as the forum for the discussion.
Awful Announcing then made the email public. According to USA Today, an ESPN spokesman told that paper that they “weren’t aware of Curt’s plan to craft or send this email.”
Which brings us to this latest suspension.
“At all times during the course of their engagement with us, our commentators are directly linked to ESPN and are the face of our brand,” ESPN said in a statement Thursday.
“Curt’s actions have not been consistent with his contractual obligations nor have they been professionally handled; they have obviously not reflected well on the company,” the statement continues. “As a result, he will not appear on ESPN throughout the remainder of the regular season and our Wild Card playoff game.”
So there you have it. No, ESPN does not explicitly say that Schilling’s email to Awful Announcing is the specific reason for the extension of his suspension. Although, the breadcrumb trail of fail is easy enough to follow.
Also easy to see is that ESPN finds nothing that reflects poorly of the company when a commentator refers to the national anthem as a “war anthem.” Nor, when another strongly implies that those who follow God’s call to stay celibate are “stupid.”
But let a conservative try to defend himself from having his thought monstrously distorted by the leftist sports media, and the world stops turning. Journalism ethics? Not so much.
