Scaros: Take a Look at Curt Schilling's 'Offensive' Tweets - Who's the Toxic One Here?
The Boston Celtics almost became the first NBA team to win a best-of-seven playoff series after losing the first three games. They emerged from that 3-0 deficit to beat the Miami Heat the next three games before ultimately losing Monday in Game 7.
No NBA team has ever won a series after trailing 3-0, and just one baseball team has ever done it: the 2004 Boston Red Sox against their most storied rivals, the New York Yankees.
That motivated NBC News sports reporter John Tomase to muse — when the Celtics-Heat series was tied 3-3 — about what Game 7 might be like on Boston’s home court, with veterans of that great Red Sox team on hand to rally the crowd. And then he went off on Curt Schilling, one of the best pitchers in baseball history, who won Game 6 that year for the Sox.
Mind you, I knew absolutely nothing about what Schilling has been doing with himself since retiring from baseball. According to Tomase, though, Schilling is a “toxic” figure who spews “racist” sentiments on Twitter.
Tomase insisted that “it only takes five seconds” on Schilling’s Twitter page to realize what kind of right-wing monster he’s become. Having no clue about Schilling’s political and ideological beliefs, I took Tomase up on the challenge and visited Schilling’s page.
His profile picture is the emblem of the U.S. Marine Corps. Pinned atop his profile are the words of the Second Amendment. That alone is enough to “trigger” some of today’s woke into seeking coloring books and cuddle puppies as coping mechanisms.
On Saturday, Schilling shared a TikTok video (as a matter of principle I ignore all things TikTok, but I watched this one as research for this article) of American history scholar Carol Swain, a black woman, discussing how from abolition to the civil rights movement it was Republicans who championed the causes of African-Americans and Democrats who tried to keep blacks from advancing socially, politically and economically. All of that is factually true.
Next on Schilling’s page is a chart showing how overwhelmingly superior teenage boys are to women in track and field events and thereby how it’s unfair for male athletes to compete against females. Apparently, saying so is “toxic” too.
The next tweet shows photos of a white woman and her three black murderers, who shot her point-blank in an attempt to steal her car. Lest anyone think this is Schilling’s way of saying “blacks kill whites,” it’s not. It is Schilling pointing out that when blacks do kill whites, the media doesn’t cover it. But when it’s whites killing blacks, it’s front-page 24/7 news.
The next item in line is factually true but misleading. It’s a news story about a man getting sentenced to community service for shooting an 84-year-old woman who was speaking against abortion. The clickbait headline doesn’t explain that the man was also of an advanced age, 75, that the woman had knocked on his door and then gotten into an argument with his wife, and that the jury found that the gun had gone off accidentally.
If Schilling posted that clickbait piece without reading beyond the misleading headline, he should’ve been more careful. If he knew the headline didn’t reflect the essence of the story but shared it anyway to perpetuate the narrative that the courts don’t care about the rights of pro-lifers, then shame on him.
The next tweet cites facts about harmful side effects children experience after being given puberty blockers (to prevent them from maturing naturally).
After that comes a tweet in which Schilling calls Tomase “spineless” and “weak-kneed,” apparently in retaliation for Tomase’s aforementioned article.
In fairness to Tomase, I decided to dig further into Schilling’s online presence. I came across an article listing his eight most purportedly controversial tweets, including one that got him fired from ESPN in 2016: a meme showing a scantily clad man with the implication that he was going to share a restroom “with your daughter.”
Although ESPN has every right as a private organization to require its employees to remain neutral on social and political issues, Schilling’s objection to gender-neutral bathrooms is far from toxic — in fact, it’s eminently reasonable.
Other tweets in that piece include Schilling demanding evidence of evolution, insisting that the Confederate flag is not synonymous with slavery, that even a tiny percentage of Muslims being extremists is troubling, and more about how the Democrats have historically harmed blacks, not helped them.
If we are to take that article as a reliable study of the most “offensive” tweets Schilling has posted, I think the real problem is not the tweets, but Tomase’s reaction to them.
I really don’t know much about Tomase. His views do not make him a bad person, just a misguided one. And he’s not alone. In today’s society, we are taught that we must love transgenderism and abortion and hate guns and the Confederate flag. And there’s absolutely no room for argument. Any questioning of that dogma makes you a “toxic” person.
I’m sure if I dig deep enough I’ll probably find statements Schilling has made with which I disagree, but it’s obvious that I’d have to do a lot of digging.
Tomase calls him “truly tragic.”
But to think that sports fans would turn against one of baseball’s legends because he thinks that grown men shouldn’t share a restroom with little girls, but would fawn over a different sports legend who thinks that would be absolutely fine — that’s what’s truly tragic.
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