…in that they’ve managed to generate some sympathy (on my part, anyway) for serial blowhard Curt Schilling. You might recall that Schilling recently lost his ESPN “Sunday Night Baseball” assignment after taking to Twitter to compare the ascent of Nazism in Germany to the growth of extremism amongst Muslims. Aggrieved by Awful Announcing’s coverage of the story, Schilling sent a somewhat defensive message to AA’s Dan Levy, one I’m not gonna quote from because the former clearly requested the correspondence remain private. Levy published the letter in full, and writing in reply to Schilling, obviously felt his adversary had no right to any expectation of privacy :
You’ve requested that I keep this between us, but you entered my inbox without my expressed permission to be off the record, and I would have said no to that request, asking anything you say be on the record. As you’ve already questioned my integrity, we are where we are, are we not? Respectful to the newsworthiness of this story, I have to decline your request to keep this between us. Had you not blocked me on social media, we could have had this conversation there.
Alright, much as I enjoy watching Curt Schilling’s punditry career go up in smoke, “entered my inbox without my expressed permission to be off the record”? Though I realize the public’s right to sneer at public figures trumps everything, was Schilling supposed to request the right to send an off-the-record email before doing so? Isn’t there enough substantial, deeply embarrassing stuff that Schilling’s committed to public record without needing to publish personal email? That most of the folks reading this cannot stand his politics or legend-in-his-own-mind status is immaterial ; Levy’s upset that Schilling has challenged his integrity, but this is hell of a way to demonstrate such.