Curt Schilling was just fired for posting a meme. Ironically its general theme centered on the nastiness of the left and their tendency to demonize those who don’t immediately agree with them, which of course, isn’t a liberal mindset. The firing appeared to jibe with the right’s general sense of persecution by way of political correctness.
It shows a fat guy, or trans woman, you’d have to ask the person, and asks if you’d want him/her using the bathroom with your presumably young daughter. While it appears transphobic, you also have to ask yourself without dismissing it: Do you want this person using the bathroom with your presumably young daughter?
I would say, no. And there are plenty of biologically born women I wouldn’t want using the bathroom with her hypothetical self either, such as, say, Casey Anthony. But Casey Anthony doesn’t outwardly look empirically fucking nuts, and if I had the chance to yank someone out of the line to the Ladies Room while she was in there this person would be at the top of my list.
Schilling also added a personal caption:
“A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. 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.”
If you aren’t familiar with Schilling, like most Tea Partiers, he’s kind of retarded. Men’s Rooms are in part designed to accommodate men, but the point of the distinction is to separate the sexes. It’s not like you scan your dick to get in or the urinals are penis molds.
After being fired, Schilling wrote a surprisingly astute defense of himself on his blog, a few passages of which:
“I’m loud, I talk too much, I think I know more than I do, those and a billion other issues I know I have… You frauds out there ranting and screaming about my ‘opinions’ (even if it isn’t) and comments are screaming for “tolerance” and “acceptance” while you refuse to do and be either… But for the love of God stop making crap up, it’s boring and it’s stupid and there are actual causes that need attention such as homeless veterans and our archaic education system.”
I never thought I’d say this but big ups to Curt Schilling. He writes on multiple instances that he sometimes posts things his beliefs aren’t implicitly aligned with. Sometimes he just thinks they’re funny. Clearly Schilling values the privilege to not be told what he can and can’t say, and is (possibly) sometimes acting out in protest. If you think about it, does posting a meme or retweeting something mean you subscribe to its ideology? If I quoted Reagan or Bush would that mean I thought they were great presidents and not evil Siths?
Designating morality is a tricky business. I don’t believe most anything Schilling believes, but I support his right to blather about it, and that means without being fired from his corporate job in this sterilized cultural landscape (the values of which are increasingly dictated by corporations which are ironically destroying our culture.)
Does ESPN really care what Curt Schilling thinks? Of course not, they’re placating liberal foot soldiers because they’ve calculated the stock risks of sticking with Schilling versus pretending to have values.
Take one of their poster boys, Ray Lewis. Lewis either stabbed to death, or witnessed his friend stab to death, a guy. What a perfect microcosm of American society. Air movies of Stallone killing the Vietnamese in droves but sanction the network when you see a nipple. Promote a killer without an opinion and fire a guy with a slightly unpopular one.
What interested me about the whole thing was that this centered around a meme. Memes are usually presented as sentences superimposed onto a visual aid. Like a picture book. This type of meme is a way of getting people to read a sentence in a functionally illiterate society by distracting them with a photo and dressing the whole thing up like you’re wrapping a pill in a piece of bacon for your dog.
I wondered if Schilling would have been fired if he’d just written in normal text and font the exact wording of that meme, leaving out the photo. Factor in that on social media, words accompanied by a visual component get more eyeballs. Also, it’s possible the photo was deemed more offensive than the caption, or that the photo in combination with the caption enhanced the overall incendiary nature of the post, or finally that Schilling was on shaky ground and anything vaguely offensive was going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I see two scenarios:
Scenario 1: ESPN’s decision to fire Schilling rested on the amount of people who viewed the meme which they deemed out of bounds versus how offensive they found the actual content. They have algorithms and consultants to monitor public opinion polls, and the balance Schilling was striking with being outspoken was slightly outweighed by their motivation to appeal to a fat docile public who get confused or start waving their stupid ass Democrat or Republican flags around when the baseball man says something mildly thought provoking.
Scenario 2: There is a group of people at ESPN tasked with unilaterally firing people based on gut instinct.
To me both of these scenarios lead to a frightening conclusion: the fact this was a meme, versus something he wrote in a sentence, figured into his firing. This is troubling for a few reasons: Like I said earlier, why is Schilling being automatically assigned a thought control stamp based on something he (re) posted and never actually created? Further, is the public level of discourse so mauled and therefore based in emotion as opposed to logic, that people are more influenced by inane pictures than words? Lastly, are the people at ESPN as stupid as the general public?
This is intriguing because, to me, the photo is the least offensive part of the entire thing. It’s actually not offensive at all standing on its own, unless you’re offended by nipples or men in skirts. It’s actually pretty funny. I still wouldn’t want that person going to the bathroom with my daughter, not because they may or may not be a trans person, but because they look crazy.
Any reasonable liberal identifying person would agree that the meme posits a valid concern: Some guy with a sex conviction could say he identified as a woman and go hang out in their bathroom. Stop brushing this off as paranoia. Take a trip through the Taco Bell drive thru on Vine and look around.
Any reasonable conservative identifying person would agree that the meme posits a valid concern: You’re being used for fear mongering purposes, there is an easy solution to this, and you never leave your house so what the fuck do you care about public bathrooms?
The photo has nothing and everything to do with it. Its power is also indicative of why people like Curt Schilling exist. Along those lines, Schilling is a forty nine year old man posting memes. We’re all fucked, it’s the one thing we have in common.
(As always please skim through or skip to the bottom of this with your preconceived opinion, misinterpret it, and loudly proclaim your well formed and nuanced take.)