As his fellow liberal travelers were being fired all around him, head of Football Outsiders, Aaron Schatz, launched into a Twitter tirade on Wednesday hinting that he thinks it is racist to complain that there is too much left-wing politics in sports reporting these days.
On the same day a large number of ESPN employees were fired — including columnists and on-air personalities — Schatz (pronounced “Shots”) took to Twitter to attack fans responding to the network’s firings. “Reading Twitter responses about ESPN layoffs,” Schatz wrote, “it occurs to me a lot of sports fans really don’t like anyone who stands up for civil rights.”
Unhappy with the responses he began to get from his first tweet, Schatz next slammed people complaining about the network being too liberal by tweeting, “When people complain that ESPN ‘went liberal,’ I don’t think it’s a complaint that anchors are discussing tax rates or regulatory policy.”
If his hint that he meant that those complaining were racist wasn’t explicit enough, Schatz made his accusation a bit more clear by adding, “See, the issue here is that many of us don’t consider ‘black people are human beings’ to be ‘politics.’ (Also ‘gay people are human beings’).”
Schatz next went on to exclaim that the layoffs at ESPN had nothing to do with liberal politics but that the response to the layoffs is all about racism. “No,” he tweeted. “The layoffs have nothing to do with civil rights. It’s the CELEBRATION of the layoffs by conservatives that is related to civil rights.”
So, it appears that as far as Schatz is concerned, anyone sick of sports media being filled with liberal politics is an obvious racist.
Naturally, Schatz was thoroughly slammed by fans on Twitter.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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