Disney and Curt Schilling

I imagine you know.  Last week, the apparently sports-cum-politics network ESPN terminated its contract with Curt Schilling.  Schilling, of course, is the former major-league pitcher who was on a few winning World Series teams a decade or so back, and is an annual candidate for Baseball's Hall of Fame given his success over the years and stellar post-season record.

He is also not only a conservative, but a very outspoken person who has never shied from saying that he has a big mouth, often in those words.  There are plenty of people across the political spectrum who should never be allowed anywhere near a Twitter account, lest they forget that people can actually read it.  Curt Schilling is one of them.  He comments on everything.

But Schilling is certainly never boring, nor does he avoid taking ownership of his actions and what he says.  It was that combination that led ESPN to hire him as a color commentator on baseball broadcasts in the first place.  He knows baseball really well, and he is willing to talk and say controversial things.  In broadcasting, that's a good combination.

Of course, in the media you are not allowed to do quite so much of that if you are a conservative, even if you are doing it on your own time.  Now, baseball broadcasting is not like, say, classified defense work, where on your own time you can get involved with things that the not-so-nice guys can use to blackmail you.  You'd better be squeaky clean in that kind of work, even at home.

I don't think the same standard remotely applies here.  Curt Schilling's conservatism is no secret; it was plenty well known in his playing days and Twitter has made sure we all know it.  ESPN knew it -- shoot, I'll bet he was hired because of it, not in spite of it.  More controversy, more ratings.  What he does on his own time is what he does on his own time.

But not this time, I guess.  Schilling re-posted an image widely sent around the Internet, relative to the whole bathroom gender "thing."  His point, or at least that of the image he forwarded or commented on (so it reappeared on his account), was that adult predatory males in a ladies room where young girls would be vulnerable, would become unpleasantly common with gender-nonspecific bathroom practices -- such as those the state of North Carolina was trying to stop.

I am not trying to come down strongly here as far as bathroom laws are concerned (that's tomorrow), although the first girl that gets molested in a ladies room by a male dressed like a female is going to blow up the Twitterverse -- and resonate in 50 state legislatures.  That argument isn't even about transgender people or their needs; it's about fake ones.  Maybe that is a far-overblown fear.  This piece is not about that anyway.

It is about ESPN.  ESPN is, of course, a part of the vast Disney network, the legacy of the late Walt Disney.  Walt Disney was in my home every weekend on TV, a comforting presence we all associated with making children happy.  Disneyland was a magical place -- far off, to us 2,000 miles away, but a children's place.  When I finally got there at age 48, I felt like a kid, even though I was performing there (and getting to meet Dick van Dyke).

I know it's all about money (FTM), but that doesn't mean that Disney doesn't have a legacy to concern itself with.  So when Curt Schilling gets fired for taking a position where he is worried about vulnerable children -- even if that isn't the main motivation -- my first question is "Does Disney as an organization support this action by one of its properties?"

I don't know.  I don't think the Disney company is as altruistic as it might have been back in the day.  But I also don't think that this was a good idea, no matter what Disney is thinking.  You hire a guy to do a job he does in a certain way, and who is a certain kind of person, then you fire him for being who he is, particularly when it is in defense of children, at least nominally.  It's like calling a mountain an ocean and then complaining that the fish look like rocks.

Because it is a conservative who got fired, the people out there will be really hacked off about his firing, but it will stand.  George Stephanopoulos can give megabucks to the Clinton Foundation while then interviewing Republicans (and Democrats, for that matter) as an ostensibly neutral party.  He still has a job.  Somehow.  That is apparently OK.  Oh, yeah, his employer is ABC, another Disney company.

Curt Schilling's apparently not-PC actions are not only consistent with everything he has done, said and stood for in the past, but they weren't done at work and don't compromise in any way his ability to do the work.  He, unlike Stephanopoulos, no longer has a job.

If that makes sense to you, I have a big Comments section below. Explain away.  I, on the other hand, will minimize my watching of ESPN and leave Disney parks alone.  They don't deserve my business, or yours.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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