I’ve bumped into Curt Schilling on twitter now and then — he has a penchant for posting flamingly stupid creationist idiocy. (I know, you’re thinking, how can a baseball pitcher possibly be that inane, don’t they teach science in ball-throwing-school? But he is.)
Keith Law is a sports writer for ESPN who uses Twitter a fair bit, and argued sensibly against Schilling.
Guess what ESPN did? They told Law to stop using Twitter. This is going to do wonders for the reputation of athletes as meatheads.
Remember always: Left-wing stuff*: POLITICAL. Right wing stuff: Just your everyday common sense values that every red-blooded Christian American NORMAL person has.
Oh, and mass media: spineless fuckers.
* Yes, of course, science is political.
And then out comes the racism. (Schilling’s last tweet on the Deadspin page)
This is ridiculous. So Curt can talk about whatever he wants (creationism, the dangers of protest), but Keith has to stick to baseball.
I am SO tired of religious people dictating in government, business, schools, hospitals, etc.
I feel like we’re halfway to a Christian theocracy.
@Rey Fox
I couldn’t agree more. And the situation makes me crazy. So facts, knowledge, science, etc. have BIAS but faith-based assertions do not…
Teach the controversy! *
*Some exceptions apply. May not allow for actual teaching or controversy.
Looking at Schilling’s tweet about Ferguson I can only shake my head. Here’s a guy who worked for 2 decades in a sport were around 10 percent of players are African American. Yet he apparently didn’t pick up from any of them even a hint of the kind of discrimination that still exists.
I am agog! I am aghast! ESPN squashing an actual journalist while riding to the defense of one of their big “personalities”? Knock me over with a feather.
As always, Richard Deitsch sums up ESPN nicely.
https://twitter.com/richarddeitsch/status/535942480391602176
Such lovely people; the Americans.
I barely skirted by Schilling years ago in an odd way. I was involved with a group of wargamers who played with Schilling and he ended up bankrolling their wargame company. He seemed nice enough then but I barely interacted with him. He sure comes across as an asswaffle now.
To be fair, grumpy, Americans hold no patent on stupid; they do often seem to get more press from it, though.
I’m sure Law’s punishment is partly for offending the knuckle-dragging demographic that watches ESPN but mostly for jeopardizing their precious “access” to Schilling. That’s a huge reason why most reporters don’t challenge public figures like they used to: their editors are so afraid of missing out on a story that all reporters do is ask softball questions.
The new First Commandment of Journalism: “Thou shalt not offend a source.”
Like jrfdeux, I knew Schilling from his love for Advanced Squad Leader board game, a wargame he so loved that he bought the rights to publish it. (Full disclosure: I design board wargames and have worked for MMP, the firm Schilling bankrolled.)
I also know Schilling from his love of computer games. (More full disclosure: I work as a computer game developer.) Schilling founded a company to make computer games and this pillar of free market capitalism and Horatio Alger bootstrapping accepted a ton of cash from the state of Rhode Island to move his company there and build an MMO game.
Schilling’s company, 38 Studios, seems to have been something of a clownshow. According to the accounts I’ve read they had their main project in a state of perpetual pre-production when they should have been kicking it into full production. Schilling took a close interest in the creative process and development. The Studio crashed and burned when the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation got antsy about its finances. A lot of talented devs lost their jobs on Schilling’s watch.
So, what I can say about Schilling is this:
(1) He’s a passionate boardgamer and computer games player.
(2) He made an awful executive of his computer games studio and extracted a lot of taxpayer’s cash which was lost for reasons he must share the blame for.
Aw gee, folks, ESPN just wants to protect a major sports figure from feeling muzzled, from being suppressed by a climate of bullying and intransigent thought police. Poor Curt Schilling is not accustomed to being misunderstood, unlike some other Thought Leaders™.
Maybe his suspension was because he said science is more important than baseball. Imagine that! A sport that has grown men hitting little balls with big sticks then running around in a circle – in what way could that NOT be more important than the field that has extended the human life span, sent us to the moon, controlled a number of dangerous diseases through vaccination, and given us a view backward in time to where we came from? No competition! Baseball = money. Science = making religion purveyors mad. How could anyone say science was more important than baseball?
Off my high horse now. Calming down.
@ Akira McKenzie #11
I’m not sure access is a problem with Schilling as he’s an ESPN employee, and I’m sure the network has a waiting list of hundreds of ex-jocks who would be all-too-eager to fill Schilling’s place should he flounce off in a huff.
Otherwise, though, you’re spot-on. Access is the one big club that organizations (sporting and otherwise) wield and they’re not afraid to use it against journalists they don’t like. It works, too, to the point where people who call themselves journalists will rally around those they cover when some “outsider” threatens everyone’s access by speaking the truth. It’s this kind of vicious cycle that leaves the likes of Wolf Blitzer and David Gregory hailed as “serious” journalists while people doing journalism worthy of the name (think Glenn Greenwald and Michael Hastings, among others) are marginalized and denounced. Quite the fall from the days of Ida Tarbell, Rachel Carson, Upton Sinclair, Woodstein, etc.
I’m guessing “no, not really”. Knowing WHY a knuckleball behaves the way it does has nothing to do with throwing one correctly and consistently.
@12, leebrimmicombe-wood:
Oh, that was Schilling? I read an anonymized version of that particular fiasco — it even hid the name of the state government/department — and, from the things in the story, for as little as you’re saying about the guy, you’re still giving him too much credit. According to the account I read, a lot of the problems with his company had to do with the fact that he was siphoning off the money the state was giving them as incentives for himself, and although he had essentially nothing to do with anything the company was trying to do, he had an office with every last perk money could buy. Having him identified as the actor in that story is not surprising in light of the OP.
@Pierce #13: Does it hurt to type that? I’d be worried about pulling a snark muscle and doing myself an injury.
I should probably just limber up first or something.
Keith Law has since returned to twitter from imprisonment by ESPN. His first twitter post:
For those who don’t know, it means “And yet it moves.” Those were Gallileo’s words upon being released from imprisonment by the catholic church.
As seen on Deadspin in one of the comments:
Here is a long but thorough account of the disintegration of Schilling’s 38 Studios.
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2012/07/38-studios-end-game/