Recently fired commentator Curt Schilling has taken his former employer ESPN to task, according to audio from a recent interview.
The former Boston Red Sox pitcher was fired from ESPN after expressing his views on North Carolina’s transgender bathroom law. The sports news giant fired Schilling last week for posting a political meme to his personal Facebook page, saying his conduct was “unacceptable.”
“Some of the most racist things that I’ve ever heard come out of people that are on the air at ESPN. There are some of the biggest racists in sports commentating, and you take it for what it is. You know who they are. You know what they are. I like that they are openly [racist] because then you know who they are. You know that they exist,” Schilling said at a Brietbart News Patriot Forum event for SiriusXM in New York City Wednesday.
The full interview aired Thursday morning.
According to Schilling, “left” opinions are tolerated at ESPN, but conservative ones are not.
“It was apparent to me early on that if you wanted to go off topic as a sportsperson, you had to go off topic left or you were going to get into trouble,” Schilling remarked, adding that he had ESPN co-workers who would agree with his political views, but only under the radar.
“We had the green room in ESPN, which I kind of turned it into a locker room where everything was on the table, you could make fun of anybody’s mom and all the things that go with that, like in a baseball locker room,” Schilling explained. “But I had people come up to me and go [whispering] ‘Hey, I’m with ya. I’m a Republican, too.’ But they had to whisper. It was like a deadly serious thing,” Schilling said, adding, “Like religion on the table was a much easier discussion than who you voted for.”
