Under fire for sharing several memes disparaging transgender people and facing scrutiny from his employer, ESPN, baseball analyst and former World Series champion Curt Schilling on Tuesday night accused his critics of manufactured outrage.
“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,” Schilling wrote in a fiery and grammatically garbled blog post.
The conservative sports analyst said that the latest “brew ha ha [sic] is beyond hilarious.”
“I didn’t post that ugly looking picture,” he wrote. “I made a comment about the basic functionality of mens and womens restrooms, period.”
Schilling shared two memes on Monday supporting the anti-transgender “bathroom bills” that have surfaced in statehouses throughout the South in recent weeks. In an accompanying comment, he wrote that a “man is a man no matter what they call themselves.”
In January, ESPN circulated a memo that prohibited on-air personalities from making controversial or “political” public comments. In an emailed statement to TPM, an ESPN spokesman said Wednesday morning that the network was still assessing Schilling’s posts.
“We are taking this matter very seriously and are in the process of reviewing it,” the statement read.
Schilling, who was suspended for much of the 2015 baseball season after sharing another meme comparing Muslims to Nazis, also argued in his lengthy blog post that the memes he shared did not reflect on the network.
“I don’t represent anyone but myself here, on facebook, on twitter, anywhere,” he wrote of his public pages.
